Americans have never been more distrustful of the federal government, big business, the media, the education system, science institutions, the medical establishment, big tech companies, and law enforcement.

What is your take?

Doug Casey: The distrust is well deserved. Of course, if you want to see a real collapse of confidence in institutions—and the institutions themselves—we might look at Haiti. This is what happens when a society is on the ragged edge of a revolution, a civil war, or a societal collapse.

Traditions, common ethical standards, and civil institutions are what make a society livable. When they disintegrate, you're looking at chaos. It can happen anywhere. Civilization is a relatively thin veneer in a Hobbesian world. In the US, it's happening because the society's institutions have been captured by Woke, collectivist, busybody, and Statist philosophies.

The people promoting Wokeism, and the like, want to destroy the current basis of society—pretty much as the Maoists did during their Great Cultural Revolution. They want to overturn the trust, traditions, and cultural beliefs that bind society together. Perversely, as they succeed, they'll say that the US is headed toward anarchy, which, of course, is completely untrue. It's headed towards chaos.

Anarchy, as many readers know, simply means the lack of government, the lack of a coercive State on top of society. Anarcho-capitalism and unregulated free markets are not only workable, but optimal, when people have confidence in their society and institutions. They're often confused with chaos and nihilism, their philosophical opposites, which are taking over our society.