> Trust isn't optional in a society. If you don't trust the "establishment", then somebody has to take its place... Do you mean that, for an individual, they m

> Trust isn't optional in a society. If you don't trust the "establishment", then somebody has to take its place... Do you mean that, for an individual, they must replace the "establishment" with some other authority as a general tendency? Or do you mean that, for society, we must have some authoritative source of truth? I disagree with both, but I assume you're talking more about the first. Although the first sentence quoted, I suspect, could be used to talk about 'low/high trust' societies, when such a concept (low- or high-trust societies) has very little to do with news media. In any case, even if I lean conservative, I tend to be very distrustful of 'conservative' e-celebs (e.g., Stephen Crowder). I'm distrustful of pretty much any second- or third-hand account unless it's court documents or police reports (and less so the latter if it concerns police brutality). I wish more people had a similar model regarding how much they trust what they hear on the news. All that said, I'll still take sponsored by NordVPN over sponsored by Pfizer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2LQW1TY0lY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2LQW1TY0lY, and yes, I know this is from "The Daily Caller", it's the first source I found that compiles these 'sponsored by' cuts, although only the first minute, then it goes into Tucker Carlson ranting).