Whatever else may be going on with this election season, it is becoming increasingly clear that something in the West is fundamentally shifting, and that historians in the future will likely be looking at the times through which we are living as time before massive upheaval. We have been here before. Usually, before massive change that fundamentally upends the status quo, there are rumblings that may go unnoticed at first, and it is only in hindsight that we can understand their meanings. For example, the Solidarity Movement in communist Poland presaged the ultimate collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, even though it took 10 years. The fact that far-right political parties in Europe have gradually been gaining political clout and that the Tea Party in movement in America broke out and is now a faction of the Republican Party are rumblings that suggest something is changing.

One major factor that has shifted is that faith in the institutions of government are low, especially in America. The reasons are varied, but one factor is that many people have lost trust in the fundamental honesty and good faith of the governing class (i.e. political, media, and academic establishments).

For example, with Greece being in periodic crisis and never actually meeting the conditions to qualify for Eurozone membership, the Euro elites have been desperate to continue to bailout Greece (with German money) to keep them in the Eurozone. They have consistently implied to the taxpayers (German) that if Greece is allowed to exit the Eurozone, then there will be a massive economic downturn. The more hysterical among the political class have assured us that such an outcome might have provoked a global economic downturn. If country whose GDP accounts for 2% of the total E.U. GDP can by exiting the Eurozone provoke even a European political crisis let alone a global economic crisis, then the global economy is extremely fragile and will be knocked down by anything. The point is that this hysteria is absurd, to the point that anyone can see it.

Or another example was the recent Brexit vote. While the ultimate impact (positive or negative) for the British won’t be known for many years, the hysteria in some elite quarters implied that a Brexit might lead to a Soviet-style economic collapse. Anybody with any sense could conclude that Britain had not become a world economic power only after it joined the E.U. While a Brexit might ultimately not be economically beneficial for Britain in the long run, that it would lead to bread lines and empty store shelves was simply not something that was plausible. And the fact that the British stock market is now higher than before the vote makes many of those formerly respected elites look very foolish.

Yet another example is the government “shutdown” a few years ago in the U.S. As a result of Congress and Obama’s failure to agree to a budget, the government supposedly ran out of funding and had to shut down for a bit. Except that it didn’t. A more accurate description would have been a government with reduced staff. The disagreement between Obama and Congress was a reduction in government spending that ultimately would have reduced discretionary government spending (roughly about 15% of the total budget) back to 2010 levels. The hysteria from the media regarding the proposed minor cuts was such that one would have thought the Republicans were proposing a wholesale repeal of the New Deal. When the “shut down” happened, the bureaucracy deliberately responded by making sure that cuts were painful and impacted as much of the public as possible. In other words, the bureaucracy had choices as to which functions that they could keep going during the “Shut Down” and which ones that they could continue, and they chose to cut the ones with maximum public impact. The claim that “there just isn’t enough money” was credible, only if one believes that government agencies are 100% efficient. A budget that was enough to provide these services in 2010 suddenly wasn’t going to be enough a couple of years later. To many non-elites, the U.S. government came to appear more as an extortionist racket than a true government trying to do its best with what it had.

What these examples, and many others, do is reinforce the perception that government (and government policy) is being run for the elites and that common people are left paying for a system that benefits them only tangentially (or actually works against their interests in some cases). The fact that elites and their media enablers propagate fiction that is visible and obvious gives credence to the notion that the system is rigged in favor of the elites and that they are willing to say anything to try and maintain this system. Furthermore, the fact that they seem to scheme to avoid making the hard decisions (i.e. ones that won’t be in their best interests personally, but might be what the country as whole needs) undermines respect for them and the legitimacy of their leadership.

In short, the political-economic system that has been in place over the last couple of generations in the West is being challenged, and the mainstream political/media establishment doesn’t seem to have a good answer for it, especially since the reality has evolved to the point that their institutionalized solutions are no longer adequate. Trying to engage in deception with the population does nothing but undermine the elites position further. By undermining their leadership position, they open the door to demagogues whose solutions are likely to result in less than optimal outcomes for everyone.