[N_Lens]

High trust is a key ingredient for high levels of innovation, and the US is sliding down the trust ladder rather quickly.

Like the saying goes 'Rot starts at the head' - meaning that when an organization, institution, or society decays, the corruption starts at the top and works its way downward.

[jfengel]

I'm not so sure that this rot did start at the head. Certainly it's true that here in 2026 there is an incredibly visible rot right at the very top of the system, but we've been working on that rot for a very long time.

That rot got to the top in 2024, when a majority of voters said, "Yes, we want this convicted felon, with a long track record of incompetence and self-dealing, to be in charge of the country". In that sense the rot started from the opposite end.

Exactly how the voters came to be so rotten is a hard-to-untangle feedback loop. There has been a concerted campaign from wealthy financiers to create it. But they were able to do so by providing propaganda that the voters really wanted. Reliable sources of information exist; the voters chose unreliable ones, and dismissed repeated evidence that they were being lied to. Now they only believe those sources.

To me, it seems like the fish rotted all over, and has been for a very long time. The fact that it has now reached the very top of the head makes it undeniable, but I would say it's a consequence rather than the cause.