Unraveling democracy: The path to a mistrustful society

It’s complicated—well, not so complicated. The real challenge lies in exposing the deliberate intent behind policies designed to obstruct progress toward an equitable society. It wasn’t subtle. It was a methodical unraveling that unfolded over decades: corrosive legislation, loaded rhetoric, redefined norms, and inverted values.

And now here we are. We have a government the American people can no longer trust to serve their collective interests, especially those below the mid-levels of the social hierarchy.

It didn’t begin with this administration. What we’re witnessing is the culmination of a carefully curated ideological shift, decades in the making, shaped through deliberate changes in social and political policy. The architects of an alternative vision for America—the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025, and the megachurch movement, a kind of spiritual alchemy fusing religion and politics—have worked methodically to reframe public trust, authority and national identity.

Faith ceased to be a calling to compassionate living. It became rather a picture of false theology, Kool-Aid to drink, and a tool to harness power under the guise of the march to divine destiny. 

The Supreme Court has lost its voice. In decades past, getting audience before SCOTUS to petition your case was the pinnacle, the crowning achievement of your legal battles through the lower courts. In this era of new realities, the Supreme Court rubber stamps the ideological shift. The birthright citizens case is prime. The ruling handed down disembowels the federal court system, repudiates the concept of nationwide injunctions that hold sway over unjust policies and executive orders. Dismantled judicial authority is a target of Project 2025. 

Tracing the evolution of this radicalized ideology is not cumbersome, tracking the decades of psychological conditioning of the American people is not hard-tasked; it baffles rational minds, and stretches the boundaries of critical thinking. Years of fear-based messaging and disinformation emotionally programmed impulsive responses to cues – woke, socialism, CRT and replacement theory. 

These ideological policies have never benefited the average American. And there are far more average Americans than there are elitists. The landscape is cluttered with broken promises. The metaphorical “bad check” Dr. King referenced in his “I Have A Dream” speech has been returned “insufficient funds” for the American people, not just Americans of African descent. 

When the orchestrated contractions result in the commonality of pain, the invisible walls erected through years of ethnic and racial divides will shatter. Ephesians 1:11 seems applicable to our dilemma of partisan divide. “In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will.”

Divisiveness is not in His will!

The American people have shut their eyes, refusing to see, and have attuned their ears to the false narratives, the reframing of truth, and the loud, consistent flow of disinformation blaring through broadcast and social media. It’s all good. James Baldwin, prophetic social critic, wrote, “People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction.” (The Fire Next Time)

Are we on the precipice of destruction, the threshold where influence becomes dominion? Once the patriotic clamor quiets, once the divine edit proves to be from the deity of power and greed, will the American people find contentment in the new realities? Have the distortions of trust, the manipulations of faith, permanently rewired our perceptions, slain critical thinking? Are these new realities fixed with no space for redirection? Good questions.

The trust is gone—but the question remains: are we too far gone to rebuild it? The unraveling may have been methodical, but so too must be our resistance.