Hi, this is Katio Rogers, executive producer of On the Media. This holiday week, we're featuring a series of

conversations about an alarming loss of trust, faith and devotion by Americans for American democracy.

This mini-series is part of a month-long campaign called The Purple Project for Democracy,

a strictly non-partisan apolitical effort.

Our very own Bob Garfield is one of the Purple Project organizers.

We recommend that you listen to this series In Order.

This is episode three in which Bob explores some of the causes for our current disaffection.

One of the reasons so many Americans have lost trust and faith in democratic institutions

is simple misunderstanding about how the system is designed to work. Another, however, is

all too much familiarity with how the system does work, which often isn't exactly of by and for the people.

Anand Girida Das is author of Winners Take All, the elite charade of changing the world.

He says the founders didn't plan on politicians constant trash talking of government itself.

I think it's very important to understand that this decline in trust in government

is the result of a private sector propaganda war over the last 30, 40 years,

and we are now seeing the long-term downstream consequences of it.

But since the 70s in the United States, there was this concerted war on the idea of government.

Government is the problem. Government is a leech. The government is a kind of glorified DMV.

And this was one of the most successful intellectual campaigns in history.

Those of your listeners who want to nerd out can go look at the Trilateral Commission,

the Powell Memo, all these documents and organizations in the 70s that organized for this kind of business takeover of public sentiment.

And lo and behold, they succeeded.

And you had Ronald Reagan and people like that saying,

...