It's funny though, if you mention the most trusted institutions are small business, the military, the police, the medical system, and religion -- a lot of elites would gasp.
And if you told them the least trusted institutions are government, news media, and big business they'd become apoplectic.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/394283/confidence-institutions-...
My philosophy is that humans are individually all corruptible and corrupt to some degree, so when you compose a system from humans the system inherits those characteristics and there's no way to design policies which remedy that. I submit all of history to the present moment as proof that I'm correct.
I agree that humans are all corruptible, but strongly disagree that there's "no way" to design policies which remedy that. Corruption thrives when there is secrecy and a lack of accountability, and is reduced when there is transparency and where power is limited.
We'll never be able to eliminate it, but we can reduce it by creating systems that increase transparency and prevent people from having unbridled power.
https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2020/01/americans-tr...
The cops clearly won't let that happen.
We can trust it to not carry out a coup, to not get involved in domestic affairs, and to not play geopolitics without consulting with the DOS first, but that's about the extent that trust goes to.
For the others, you seem to be confusing 'ignorance of' or 'sentiment for' with 'trust'.
Police departments are federal, state, county, and city.
Religion is highly fragmented.
I imagine trust in "religion" would change if it was broke out into it's representative governing bodies as opposed to one big bucket.
Baptists don't trust the Pope or any Vatican leaders.
Catholics don't trust the Mormon church leaders.
Jehovah's Witnesses don't trust Jewish leaders.
and so on...
"Trust" in religion is almost always going to be "your own" religion, and even then, we see church infighting and splits regularly.