If people lose faith in their govenment, they no longer hold it to a high standard, believe in sincerity of government agents, and as a result are less engaged in democratic processes and aren't able to make high quality voting descisions. Sincere do-gooders won't run for office, and instead power-hungry people who can stomach the public distaste for government will run. A spiral of cynicism and distrust also enables actors with antidemocratic agendas like populist parties and strong-man leaders to capture power.
OK, first of all, whether A trusts B has no bearing on whether B is trustworthy, which should only be based on facts and not what A thinks. A could be driven by fear and mislead by misinformation.
Secondly, on the opposite end, is it democractic if there exists a widespread, blind trust in the government?
The word for a healthy mistrust is skepticism.
Maybe the citizens in a constitutional, parliamentary democracy should always be skeptical of what their elected and non-elected public servants are doing.
If there is a widespread mistrust which is rationally based in too many government activities and decisions being behind closed doors, that does seem to point to a dent in democracy.
yes it is. Whether the trust is blind or based on reason, as long as the choice had been with the people's vote, it is democratic.
For some reason, some people assume that democracy will somehow produce the best outcome for them. Democracy doesn't automagically produce good outcomes. Democracy requires that each voter to be rational and informed, and requires the voting system to not exhibit bias (which the USA certainly does - first-past-the-post sucks). And even then, those two requirements only produce an outcome which is representative of the will of the people, rather than a good outcome for all (such as good equality, wealth distribution, etc).
In that sense, you are agreeing with me because what I wrote is also that democracy requires a rational constituency (that therefore doesn't exhibit blind faith in government).
Though you thought you would be writing statements which disagree with mine, as you can see it is difficult to get away from the idea that democracy must be defined by the good outcome, and not the political motions and trappings that are supposed to cargo-cult it into existence. Dictatorships have pseudo-democratic "votes" also.
Consider that the bulk of the power structure of a modern "free world" government is not elected. The elected cabinet is like a squad of midget toreadors armed with whips, where the government is a 50,000 pound bull.
Not trusting them to execute the will of the majority means you dont believe you are a democracy.
But I guess not trusting them "blindly"?
My interpretation would be that distrust in government usually causes a raise in cheap populism and many heavily populist leaders tend to be more authoritarian.
The title is in essence a cypher or "speaking in code"; it means something rather different to people who have the correct key. I don't mean that in any condescending way, but that is what it is. Just read it as "Declining trust in {condition of control} is denting the {conditioning of control}" … "Declining trust in the rider is denting the obedience of the horse"
It's essentially like when parents speak in euphemisms or use substitute words to convey the actual meaning. The difference being though that it's also a kind of activation phrase or trigger phrase to execute a certain preconditioned sequence in different audiences; e.g., "that person gives me stuff when I vote for him, therefore I need to keep being able to vote, which makes democracy a 'good' thing that I need to protect". It's something that certain people have long ago figured out and have a long history of using to manipulate people and things in their favor. Once you start understanding just how sophisticated it all is, it's hard to not be utterly impressed by it. THAT's the real nature of the "simulation" theory and also why the reaction to the "NPC" meme was so harsh and disproportionately swift. When you have people in mental Matrix pods living a life they are not even aware is controlled by outside forces, let alone is a ruse, and you are totally dependent on that system remaining in place to continue living a life of excess and decadence; you will do anything to keep it that way. I hope we will get to the point one day where people realize this … realize that the core that manifested itself as slavery and serfdom and feudalism really never ended, it just pivoted, as we call it here.
It may make a lot more sense to people when you read the headline as "Declining trust in the divinity of/dependency on the ruling class is denting the system of psychological control over the serfs" … and you realize it is meant to activate the above sequences that concludes that democracy is "good" because it leads to free stuff.
I don't know how you managed to weave in the private corporation Twitter banning an organized brigade of troll accounts as evidence of anything, but NPC Twitter accounts were used to basically say "people I disagree with aren't real people, they all say the same stuff!".
Another way to look at it, the NPC meme is "if everyone is an asshole, it's probably just you" but told from the asshole's point of view.