I was driving home in the darkness the other day when it suddenly occurred to me that I was traveling on trust.

I trusted that my car had no design flaws that might lead to a loss of control, and I assumed the same was true of everyone whose car was barreling toward me just one lane over. I trusted that my fellow drivers were not impaired and would willingly obey all traffic signals and signage. I trusted that the road was properly maintained, my tires would stay intact for the duration of my trip, and I would arrive home to find that no one had burglarized me during my absence. Should catastrophe have struck at any time during my journey, I trusted that police and medical professionals would do their jobs to protect and heal me.

Most of all, I trusted that our elected leaders, government entities, our major institutions, and my fellow citizens had made—and would continue to make—choices and decisions that benefitted the community, state, and nation that I count upon for my safety and security and that of those whom I love. Were this not to be the case, a cascade of anger and paranoia would quite understandably engulf me because the trust upon which I build my daily life would have been violated.

Welcome to America, the land of the fearful, foolish, and frustrated—for good reason.

Many of us are afraid our current leaders are either so blindingly incompetent, incredibly corrupt—or perhaps both—that our fundamental institutions of government, education, and public safety are now so deeply compromised that they pose a threat to our nation and our citizens. The mind-boggling fiscal mismanagement of our country’s finances (our national debt just hit $34 trillion), the academic and ethical rot at the core of so many of our public schools and systems of higher education, the ongoing invasion of our nation’s borders that the Biden administration does little to stop, the too recent insanity of forcing pointless masking and dangerously untested vaccines on our nation, the many armed conflicts engulfing our world today, the crime running rampant throughout our cities while prosecutors turn a blind eye, and the official and media efforts to downplay every one of these persistent and pernicious problems provides clear testimony that our nation is in deep trouble, much of which is directly attributable to poor decisions at the top. 

At this point in American history, one has to wonder if we should continue to defer to the supposed wisdom of our country’s leaders—or fear them as the existential threat that they now seem to be.

Foolishness also abounds wherever we look today. Listening to the tortured apologists for former Harvard President Claudine Gay, she of the serial plagiarism and inability to distinguish between defending free speech and endorsing genocide, it is impossible to ignore just how many of our most highly educated individuals seem so resoundingly stupid—but we should not be all that surprised. Accountability and personal responsibility have been out of fashion in education (as well as government, journalism, and law) for many decades, so the unsurprising result has been the elevation of those who lack either common sense or a conscience from our kindergarten classrooms right up to the presidencies of our most prestigious universities and key institutions. The explosion of foolishness we all must suffer—from the wasteful idiocy of forcing us to try to run our nation on windmills to enabling the sexualization of our children—is a direct result of the willing embrace of fashionable psychoses by America’s elites.

Sadly, it is always easier to blame bigots for your professional and personal failures rather than take a hard look at your own shortcomings; the evasions of responsibility that now define what passes for leadership in America today are a masterclass in mendacity.

In the final analysis no one should be shocked by the fear induced by the bizarre failures of our leaders and their foolish devotion to Woke fantasies instead of facts; the epidemic of frustration with the direction of our country is, therefore, both expected and understandable. The historically low approval ratings of President Biden, Congress, our court systems, our public schools, and the state of our nation as a whole—with only 28% of U.S. adults, according to a recent Gallup poll,stating they are satisfied with the way democracy is working in America today—is a clear indication that the bile is rapidly rising in America’s collective throat. 

A lack of trust in our leadership and our major institutions might turn out to be the fulcrum upon which the 2024 elections will turn, and efforts to undermine the will of the people with anti-democratic ballot disqualifications and electoral interference through other judicial chicanery will only stoke the white-hot rage that is the most salient characteristic of our country’s electorate today.