IDK I spent a weekend with old friends in a swing state and at least amongst people comfortable enough (only in that they are employed and aren’t facing eviction, still in low paid dead end service jobs). They are just really doubling down on this mindless “both parties suck” and “the government is bullshit”. I think enough of the American people can’t imagine anything being substantively different or diagnose what’s wrong other than that the system is failing, that as long as they have a job, food, and a place to live they will just try to keep their heads down and continue on. I think at this point the question isn’t the rate of loss of faith, but the ability to coalesce people around real demands or visions on how things could really be different (which is why BLM was able to take off) and having enough messaging/organization to prevent cooptation or energy just being dissipated.

what would an american legitimacy crisis even look like? the default american position for democrats, conservatives, libertarians, leftists, apoliticals, is to not expect anything from the government. i could see conservative state governors increasingly ignoring the orders of the federal government, except the supreme court will just sign off on whatever it is they want to do so dems will accept it too.

I’m not saying we have no faith left to lose, but i don’t really know where it is.

I go back and forth a lot between thinking people are losing faith in U.S. systems in record time, and thinking that I’m making up libidinal fantasies and overestimating the speed or extent of that loss of faith.

Same here, really. Things are obviously declining really hard and fast (relative to the previous 50 years), and yet things are mostly business as usual.

I don’t understand how people can still have faith in the political system.

There’s been a legitimacy crisis for a long time, but now white people are being affected, so it’s “new.”