Sorry, I wrote my previous comment after I just woke up, it's a bit messy now that I take a second look at it. I guess the way I used "elites" in my previous c

Sorry, I wrote my previous comment after I just woke up, it's a bit messy now that I take a second look at it. I guess the way I used "elites" in my previous comment refers more to a certain perception of society some people hold, rather than to a definite group of people. If we take the policies implemented during the COVID pandemic as an example, those came from the government, oftentimes backed by academia. Since a lot of people think the government is doing a bad job overall, they don't trust the legitimacy of those policies and oppose the scientific reasoning that led to them being adopted. When the economy is doing well, people put more trust into their government, or the "elites". Therefore, my thesis is that distrust into the institutions/science comes from a general discontent of the population, and is not a natural state of humanity.