Who Can You Trust?

I have a young friend whose politics are informed by a lack of trust in government, a position that I am sympathetic toward.  Our presidents have lied to us, especially about the most momentous thing of all – going to war!  Woodrow Wilson lied to us, FDR lied to us, LBJ and Richard Nixon lied to us.  Donald Trump lied to us when he need not have.  But mistrusting the establishment and/or the mainstream media has its perils, like compelling you to ask: who do you trust?  One answer is, no one: but that kind of nihilism leads nowhere.  Another answer is the anti-establishment.  But who are they?  Donald Trump, the Prince of Lies, has tens of millions of Americans who trust him, despite the clear evidence that no one else in the American tradition has ever been accused, justly, of SO treating the simple truth like poison.  The mainstream media is slanted, no doubt; but media has always been slanted to the left, as its practitioners (aka journalists) live by the credo, the pen is mightier than the sword.  A journalist’s adversaries – those who wield the sword – have always been those who wield power: the government and concentrated wealth, individuals and private corporations.  But, while they are slanted left, they rarely lie, as they have a reputation to protect; too many lies, and you lose readership.  I slant left myself, for a similar reason: I am always on the side of the underdog, as power does not need my support and I will never sell my soul to the devil with the most dollars.  You might alternatively choose to give your trust to those who fight the establishment, like the Proud Boys, like the Oath Keepers, like the KKK.  But maybe some anti-establishment folks are just plain evil, or at least morally corrupt.  How about whistle blowers?   Sure, some blow their whistles in favor of the public (Manning and Snowden), others blow to make a reputation for themselves (Drudge and Breitbart).  How about conservative talk radio?  I am fascinated by this group, and I go out of my way to listen to them, when I am not preoccupied with personal issues.  They seem to be united by being against everything, especially liberal governments, even when liberals are out of power (but they pull all the strings anyway, right?).  But the talk radio guys are always so … angry, so angry that I imagine that any regular listener of theirs must finally suffer a heart attack while they drive, from the inevitable spike in their blood pressure.  Listen to these guys long enough and you will suffer a massive heart attack, or maybe kill someone else before you kill yourself.

I have just outlined what I think we ought not to do to inform our politics and our sources of news, to determine who to trust.  What do I suggest that we should do, in a forward moving way?

I have argued before that we should trust scientists because they know their specialty science better than we do and they all seem to agree on what they claim to know.  But as good a source as they may be, expect them to change their minds as more and better data comes their way.  The same is true of journalism: trust the professional practitioners (yeah, the MSM) until you catch them in a lie, that they don’t repent of immediately.  But let’s look at the numbers, who do Americans trust the most (and the least)?  In 2021, 2022 and 2023, Gallup asked us who had a “Great deal / Quite a lot of confidence” in various American institutions.  At the top of each year's list was Small Business.  Near the bottom was Big Business.  Interesting already, right?  At the absolute bottom was Congress.  Which is also interesting, as incumbency is the most reliable predictor of future success.  In other words, Americans really don’t trust Congress, but they make an exception of their own Congress person!  American trust SCOTUS more than the president more than Congress (go figure).  Americans trust newspapers more than TV news.  The only institutions that a significant majority (60% or more) of us trust are Small Business and the Military.  But over time, we seem to have lost trust in virtually every institution that Gallup surveyed.  So, my young friend’s lack of trust is a real reflection on what ails us as a nation.  And we are not getting better!

 

This loss of trust runs along the same rail as our collective sense that our future does not look golden.  The middle class has shrunk for 40 years, middle class wages have remained essentially stagnant for 40 years, and the middle class’s sense of job security has all but collapsed in the past 40 years.  When a nation’s future does not look bright, its people lose trust in its institutions.  Loss of trust begets desperation, desperation begets crime, when too many of us live in prison civilization is at its end.

 

What do we do long-term, not for desperation but for its underlying causes, economic uncertainty and joblessness (and a loss of shared values: read my other blog posts)?  We the people have to remember that in the end we are in charge.  If we do not make that real, we will get what we worked for, what we deserve, hell on Earth.  If we allow technology (and concentrated wealth) to make our choices, we will get the future that they will allow us.  It is up to us.

 

What should my young friend do short-term, regarding his loss of trust?  First, he must not surrender to anyone his final authority over what to believe.  Anyone whom he would follow over a cliff will eventually ask him to do just that, and it will be too late to stop.  Second, if a source of information always tells him what he wants to believe, he should run away as fast as he can, as he is moments away from swallowing the blue pill (which has its benefits, if that is the life you want to live).

 

Choose!