Who is to blame for the erosion of trust in America?
I think it's the American public for tolerating untrustworthiness.
I’m a fan of Abe Greenwald and an even bigger fan of Bill Otis. Naturally, then, I found much to like in Bill’s discussion of Greenwald’s brilliant article about the downward direction of America (a topic I wrote about here).
Greenwald attributed our downward spiral to our “lost capacity to trust.” Bill countered:
It’s not that we’ve lost our capacity to trust. It’s that so much in our culture has become untrustworthy. Dishonest, in a word. And that very few opinion leaders even take note of it, much less sound the alarm.
Bill is right. Much in our culture has become untrustworthy. But this phrasing invites the question of why it has happened.
Bill more than hinted at the answer when he wrote: “What I see now is a staggering amount of dishonesty and an even more staggering nonchalant acceptance of it.” (Emphasis added) In my opinion, the nonchalant acceptance of dishonesty by the public has caused the staggering amount of dishonesty we’re witnessing.
In a comment on Bill’s post, I tried to demonstrate this in the context of national politics. I wrote:
In 1973, the U.S. had, back-to-back, two of the most dishonest presidents ever. Lyndon Johnson lied his way into a disastrous war and then lied about its disastrous course. Richard Nixon lied constantly although, unlike Bill Clinton, at least he had the decency to sweat while he lied (as Jackie Mason quipped).
One big difference between 1973 and now is that, back then, Americans seemed bothered when politicians lied. Nowadays, they are bothered only when politicians who aren't on their side of the ideological divide lie.
This trend became pronounced under Clinton ("mistakes were made, it's time to move on"). It got worse with Donald Trump, whose utterances were "taken seriously, but not literally" by a huge chunk of voters.
(Emphasis added)
Our political culture has become untrustworthy because we have allowed this to happen. We seem less insistent that our leaders be honest. (Johnson and Nixon came to bad ends. Clinton didn’t and Trump hasn’t — at least so far.)
Dishonesty in a leader is considered a flaw, to be sure. But we seem more willing to forgive this flaw if the dishonest leader says what we want to hear, or is a “fighter,” or his lie is “just about sex,” or he presides over a flourishing economy.
Reasonable people can disagree about the merits of this approach to evaluating leaders. But I think it’s undeniable that the less we insist on honest leaders and hold dishonest ones accountable, the more dishonesty we’re likely to get.
The failure to hold public officials accountable for dishonesty exists at the local level, too, and it has led, I think, to dishonesty in the context of public education. Local Education officials and school boards have consistently gotten away with teaching radical doctrines such as Critical Race Theory and gender fluidity and with falsely insisting that they aren’t teaching such things.
They have gotten away with this because too many parents don’t follow the education of their children closely enough. They are too busy advancing their careers. Or they care only about their kids’ grades, not what they are being taught. Or they are single moms whose energy is sapped by other demands.
Dishonesty is rampant in American media. Why? I believe it’s because way too many of us are more concerned about whether media outlets tell us what we want to hear than about whether they tell us the truth or what they really think.
Thus, Tucker Carlson (who features in Greenwald’s article) maintained great ratings as he fed viewers a non-stop pro-Trump line that, in private, he repudiated. On the other side of the divide, left-liberal outlets relentlessly peddled the baseless Russia collusion story (which Greenwald also highlights) for years, with improved ratings. In both cases, viewers/readers did not seem bothered when the dishonesty was exposed.
I don’t recall this level of insincerity and downright dishonesty being tolerated back when, for example, Walter Cronkite was billed “the most trusted man in America.” Cronkite didn’t deserve this billing, but it was a huge selling point because trustworthiness, rather than overt and blatant partisanship, was what Americans wanted most from the media.
There’s no question that dishonest politicians, media stars, etc. deserve blame for the public’s lack of trust. But politicians, demagogues, and partisan news outlets will always be tempted to lie if they think they can get away with it.
In my view, therefore, primary blame for the erosion of trust resides with the public for increasingly letting public figures and media types get away with dishonesty.
Paul: I think you are right that gullible people are likely to get dishonest leaders. Being uninformed also allows politicians to lie with impunity. Biden's non-stop prevarication about his own life story, the economy ("best ever") demonstrate his contempt for the public. He believes he can get away with it and nothing yet has proven him wrong.
But the rot has spread far beyond Presidents. It's the prestigious institutions - corporations, universities, newspapers and important federal agencies - that have lost credibility, and deservedly so.
Will anyone really believe what the CDC has to say again, given the way they have beclowned themselves during the pandemic, and continue to beclown themselves, telling health care providers this week, for example, that they need to help trans men "chest feed" their babies?
The FBI's problems extend far back to Hoover with many ignominious stops along the way. Those of us who grew up in Boston know that the local field office was bought by Whitey Burger, and if it weren't for Mayor Ray Flynn, the head of that field office (Zip Connolly, Whitey's sponsor) would have been named Boston Chief of Police through the influence of the state senate's President, Whitey's brother Billy Bulger.
Obama's weaponization of the IRS, DoJ (especially the Civil Rights Division) and the EPA set those institutions against political opponents, to the point where they feel free to toy with the lives of innocent people to teach the rest of us a lesson.
By now, most people are onto the scam of higher education and thanks to the pandemic, of public education.
The IRS? A taxpayer can't even get through call center hold to dispute a letter threatening to confiscate assets unless you pay late fees, due to a crappy interface between the IRS's payments system and its returns processing system. Yes, this has happened to me twice, and to so many other taxpayers that our Congressmen now retain consultants ("Taxpayer Advocates") to help untangle the system's errors.
The EPA insists on trying to use the power of the Clean Water Act to regulate and fine farmers who maintain ponds or irrigation ditches. Even after years of litigation and finally winning at the Supreme Court, are those farmers ever going to trust the EPA again, about anything?
The list is practically endless, and that's the problem. The power of so many institutions is being so routinely abused in ways that affect so many people. The cost and time required by the legal process to remedy these abuses contributes to the distrust, since the institutions have the resources to use the cost of the process as a punishment. Ask Gen. Flynn, Carter Page, George Papadopoulus, et al.
The distinguishing feature of corrupt institutions, whether in matters of police corruption, political corruption, or plain old financial corruption, is that their main objective is to protect the institution itself. When faced with malfeasance, they circle the wagons the protect the institution rather than take out the trash.