To Fix the U.S., We Must First Restore Trust

I was asked to respond to this recent question posed on Quora: "What one thing must America improve to avoid serious trouble in the not too distant future?"

The restoration of trust between and among individuals, the restoration of trust among the electorate and local, state, and the national government, as well as the restoration of trust between consumers, suppliers, producers, distributors, and advertisers, is vital to the overall restoration of reasonable and constructive dialogue across the socio-political-economic-humanitarian spectrum of America’s way of life.

If we continue down our path of becoming a nation of mistrustful strangers—distrusting those we elect and the process by which we elect them, distrusting those who protect us and our communities, distrusting those who inform us through print, video, and electronic media, distrusting those institutions responsible for educating our children, and distrusting those from whom we buy the goods and services necessary to feed, clothe, house, and provide medicines and health care, we will only see the widening of the chasm dividing us at almost every level of communication and human interaction.

My point of view is informed by a real and deep-seated feeling that there is an evolutionary sea change in America’s — and Americans’— interpretation of the founders’ expression of unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, a vision that, even if flawed in the details, was admirable on its face. For the record, I embrace the philosophies of both John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (with a touch of Hobbes)—I believe it is possible to be a romantic and a realist, a defender of naturally-endowed individual rights, the value of one’s own labor, and an advocate for a responsive government that mediates social and economic disparities.

Let us admit, without rancor, finger-pointing, and self-flagellation, that our republic is imperfect. Let us admit that our institutions of government, faith, consumerism, media, and security are inherently flawed structures created for and by inherently flawed people. I encourage such admission because the evidence of our failings is manifest beneath the broad arc of our history; we cannot escape the truth of our transgressions. A short list of what we have not done right may be appropriate:

• Yes, the founders were white, male, privileged, and often pompous.
• Yes there were founders who were slave owners.
• Yes there were deals cut on the back of slavery and the three-fifths compromise was an immoral expediency brokered to move the Constitution toward ratification.
• Yes, slavery continued to enrich white landowners and paved the path to Civil War on the bodies and souls of an enslaved and voiceless population.
• Yes, Lincoln was imperfect and overstepped his executive powers in the heat of war.
• Yes, reconstruction brought pain and corruption to a defeated South.
• Yes, the railroad barons took terrible advantage of cheap Asian and Irish labor in the rush to build the steel rail links between the East and West coasts.
• Yes, corruption and abuse of power ruled too many American cities, and local politics were rife with cheaters, scammers, thugs, and violent men whose intentions were vile and self-enriching.
• Yes, the rise of yellow journalism and its salacious editorializing threatened the dialogue of truthful news gathering.
• Yes, Jim Crow was a blight on our history.
• Yes, segregation was (and, in my opinion, remains) a blight on our history.
• Yes, we unconstitutionally imprisoned tens of thousands of our fellow Americans in internment camps during World War II.
• Yes, Vietnam was a mistake of devastating proportions.
• Yes women were the largest disenfranchised portion of our population until well into the 20th century, and they remain less-than-equal in too many respects.
• Yes, any form of police brutality and overreach of authority is wrong. Yes, human trafficking happens within our national, state, and local borders.
• Yes, drug abuse is on the rise.
• Yes, guns continue to take the lives of our children.
• Yes, we disproportionately imprison young black men.
• Yes, hate groups continue to defecate on the precious fabric of our society.
• Yes, every president in the 20th century (and, so far, into the 21st century) was/is imperfect and capable of great error of judgment and, in some cases, demonstrated their imperfections and hubris by word and deed, a true malfeasance in office.

The list of “yes-we-were/are-wrong-or-misguided” is a long one and I believe most Americans acknowledge the flawed characteristics of what is by all measures a messy form of government and society. And in looking at this list, we have to resist the urge to cherry-pick those we want to defend and those we want to pillory.

The list of “but-we-are-capable-of-greatness-and-humanity” is even longer. The problem with writing out even a portion of a “greatness” list is that it will not be trusted by a segment of America that has become desensitized to counterpoint and debate, a portion of society that is unwilling to listen to and process a positive message because of an assumption that the messenger is biased or elitist or uninformed and represents a tribal point of view antithetical to other tribes’ points of view.

I recommend Jonah Goldberg’s new book, “Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism; Nationalism, and Identity Politics is Destroying American Democracy.” To many of my readers, the irony of this recommendation is that Goldberg and I do not often occupy the same political stage—his is a conservative voice, mine trends liberal, but we do see eye-to-eye on this issue of an America in dire jeopardy due to a loss of communication, a diversion of values, and a retrenchment of tribal habits unflattering to, and destructive of, our social-political-faith fabric.

I want to be very clear…I am in no way using the term “tribal” as a racial pejorative, lest my critics leap on this word in its most useless and inflammatory meaning. The rise of unbridled social media, coupled with a selfish or self-absorbed populace (individual or group), polarized news media and/or punditry, and paralyzed, election-centered representative government all contribute to tribal divisions—or the assumption of tribal divisions.

And therein lies the problem—tribalism engenders mistrust which in turn engenders silence among all parties, and that silence creates a vacuum which sucks all the potential objectivity out of social discourse. To be clear, we are not becoming a nation of untrustworthy people, but a nation of people unwilling to put our faith in once-trustworthy institutions and once-accepted norms and traditions which, in the past, provided sound footing for national progress. We are becoming separatists in too many senses of the word. We are separating ourselves from all forums of open, safe, and mutually-beneficial dialogue because we no longer trust that our points of view will be taken on their merits and discussed without subjective attack.

We have created, instead, social media forums that thrive on attack and uninformed subjectivity, forums that squander whatever “fair play” their creators touted, forums that, within two or three posts of a single thread, devolve into shouting matches filled with sound and fury and become meaningless or, worse, emotionally devastating. These tribally-fueled forums exist not just on social media—they exist in everyday discourse: in town hall meetings, on cable and network news, in editorials, and, I am sad to say, increasingly on college campuses. If we cannot trust our institutions of higher learning to be fields of non-judgmental exchanges of myriad ideas, what then is the future of epistemological examination of anything for the coming generations of students?

To return to the original question, Americans must overcome the decades-long destruction of institutional and personal trust that once characterized the interactions between the government and the governed, between people of differing opinions who retreat from discourse rather than engage in helpful, gracious, respectful discussions. If we cannot reclaim trust—the north star toward which our compass once pointed—we will continue to veer far from the course upon which we set the nation so long ago.