We've Been Thinking About America's Trust Collapse All Wrong -- The Atlantic
Millions of us have not lost trust in our fellow Americans, but this is still worth a read. 
https://archive.ph/e0JL6
Cultivating strong mistrust is a way of giving up on others, a kind of quiet quitting for civic life. I wonder whether we appreciate what we are at risk of giving up. It is unusual to live in a time and place peaceful enough to lead a stable life, free enough that people can set the direction of their future together. Being born into this, none of us did anything to deserve it. But we do get to decide what to do with it. Politically engaged people feel deeply the things that are wrong with the country, and they are right. But anger and reproach are most effective when they come along with a very different set of feelings: gratitude for a country where it remains possible to do better and a sense of responsibility to build up that decent and democratic potential wherever we find it.
We need to shake off the idea that democracy should come naturally. This is a superstition of the enlightened, and it serves us very badly in a time of democratic crisis. As perceptive observers have always understood, democracy is extremely demanding. It requires the qualities of mind and character that sustain a healthy and balanced political trust, such as the willingness to listen to others and to doubt one’s own side. It also requires the commitment to build a world of citizens, not just consumers or spectators or even protesters, but people who expect to exercise power and responsibility together. We will need to take control of our own future before it becomes a present we cannot stand to trust.
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I'd have to say it's been a mixed bag. Which I'm not against, in principle.
It's just that the few well analyzed and fact based articles I've read -- that also don't throw shade on democracy and the left -- don't make up for the larger number that take cynical and niche perspectives on America. Overall, the Atlantic's writers don't frame a positive vision of the future for this country.
But I recommend that you should give it a try. You might see it differently. It does, indeed, provide better than the average food for thought. 
And I don't "trust" that the numbers used to bolster that view are up-to-date or accurate, either.
Doesn't mean his numbers are wrong, but his lack of source attribution is suspect to me.
If Americans look back to external short and long term causes for distrust, they generally agree that one source has been media and social media, which, imho, slowly adopted market values (over enlightenment values) that have paved a distrust road that millions of hearts and minds got gently nudged down over generations (because corporations live across generations). It was't just the political arena that sowed Americans' distrust.
Definitely agree that it's been the monied class that has both bought and churned out
a) perception and fear management, b) messaging through their media, and c) stripped constitutional rights, along with the good and welfare social contract (under the cover of neoconservative/neoliberal "doctrines," whether economic or social).
Finally, the monied elites have tried to literally use states as laboratories of autocracy and divisiveness, for power and/or profit.
Fair point: " We can't put bandaids on the civility issue and expect it to fix systemic broken things." Love how that thought rings true.
As usual with writers, this one deals more with the measuring distrust, and defining areas of distrust, and less with suggesting how those might be fixed.. His main suggestion is that it's people who should do the work of rebuilding trust, instead of who/what should do the work of rebuilding their own trustworthiness, whether it's the 1%, media, or politicians.
imo, Institutions are a huge part of social cohesion. I only read this article once, but I think he omits the erosion of trust in institutions across arenas.
If this trust "collapse" is as big a problem as this writer claims, it's taken a long time within a huge country, and the oldest democracy on Earth, to get there. Because of that, his suggested solutions to re-establish a 70's era trust level will take longer to build than they took to erode. Unless disasters force Americans to take trust risks. That might happen, and expanding our trust capacities might actually be forced on us.
I've gotten carried away here. Thanks for that. 
