![Eddie Hoeschen, 2, rode on his grandpa Kevin Hoeschen's, of Duluth, shoulders as they walked through a thick crowd at the Minnesota State Fair in Falcon Heights, Minn., on Friday, August 23, 2019. ] RENEE JONES SCHNEIDER ¥ renee.jones@startribune.com Kids perspective of the fair](https://arc.stimg.co/startribunemedia/VCD4U5ZWXL5LWKSXGVDZCSRWEE.jpg?&w=1080)
Few Minnesotans were shocked at last week's news that metal detectors will go up at entrances to the State Fair.
If anything there was surprise that the fair board hadn't acted sooner. But then it's understandable that officials would cling as long as possible to the gauzy myth of the fair as a joyous gathering of neighbors who share the unifying specialness of living in a state where everyone is above average.
The cold reality is different, of course. Last year's fair ended with a shooting near the main gate that wounded three people followed by a fight that injured a woman and caused a stampede inside the grounds. Police blamed rival gangs.
That incident wasn't the impetus for adding security. Sadly, metal detectors are now standard issue for all major events, and the State Fair, with 2 million visitors a year, is as major as it gets in these parts.
"It's just another layer of security," State Fair General Manager Jerry Hammer said in announcing the change. "When you have 2 million of your friends and neighbors in one place, you want to make sure that everything is safe and secure and that people feel that way."
That's a major challenge, especially because the wider motivation for tighter security is the broad societal sense of eroding trust.
In recent decades, social scientists have measured the incremental decline in confidence that Americans have in one another and in their institutions. The decline has been steepest since 2017 when trust in government plunged by 14 percentage points, according to a Pew Center survey. Only a third of Americans now trust their government to do "what is right." Faith in media, business, religion, charitable organizations and fellow citizens is falling as well.
Although there's no single root cause, an article in this month's Stanford Social Innovation Review offered a list of prime suspects: public and private corruption, poisonous public rhetoric, rising economic inequality, breakdowns in the rule of law, a perception that individual voices and votes don't matter, a sense that elites have rigged all systems to benefit themselves, and media/social media outlets that spread disinformation to exacerbate division and social grievance.
