Loss of confidence coincides with a general loss of hope.  It means there is no trust in a better tomorrow, or at least the chance for progress.  As it escalates, one can feel like there’s an increasing certainty that one’s children and grandchildren will not be better off or even more secure.  These are old and authentic feelings that all people have encountered, particularly when it comes to their governments/rulers.

When you look at history cursorily — what happened to Rome, Central America pre-Columbus, the Dark Ages in Ancient Greece — whatever epoch changing moment you can identify when there was wholesale dislocation and people abandoned their cities and economies, there was a loss of faith involved.  The economies stopped working because people no longer believed there was anything worth trading, and consequently, there was no stability.  People stopped trusting institutions and didn’t care and/or didn’t have the resources to support anything but themselves until their infrastructure — military, sanitary, agriculture, trade — was completely unsustainable and could no longer support itself.  The so-called barbarian invasions in Rome were actually more incremental, and were really the last straw that broke everything.  The decline had been going on for much longer.

That malaise is definitely now in America.  Mixed with anxiety and anger, there’s an increasing worry that things not only are not getting better, but in fact the signs of economic progress that do exist are fraudulent.