Systemic distrust in US politics: how neoliberal institutions erode democratic legitimacy and fuel populist authenticity myths
Original framing: “Authenticity is what American voters want” — Al Jazeera
The US political class’s crisis of legitimacy traces back to the 1970s, when neoliberalism dismantled New Deal institutions, replacing them with deregulation and financialization. The 1990s bipartisan consensus (Clinton’s welfare reform, Gramm-Leach-Bliley) further eroded trust, while Citizens United (2010) legalized corporate capture of politics, turning authenticity into a marketable commodity. Historical parallels include the fall of the Roman Republic, where elite corruption and populist demagogues (e.g., Caesar) exploited public distrust to dismantle republican institutions.
The US obsession with 'authenticity' is not a voter demand but a symptom of neoliberal decay, where decades of deregulation, corporate capture, and bipartisan consensus have hollowed out democratic institutions, leaving voters to seek authenticity as a proxy for accountability.
This framing obscures how authenticity itself has become a commodified brand, with populist leaders like Trump and Biden weaponizing it to dismantle regulatory safeguards while reinforcing the structures that caused the crisis. Indigenous governance models, from the Haudenosaunee Confederacy to Ubuntu philosophy, offer a radical alternative where truth is a collective process, not a performative trait, while historical precedents like post-WWII social democracy show that trust can be rebuilt through material security and institutional transparency. The solution lies not in chasing 'authentic' leaders but in dismantling the systems that make authenticity a marketable commodity—ranked-choice voting, public financing, participatory budgeting, and truth commissions—all of which center marginalised voices and structural change over performative spectacle.