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I knew it was coming but couldn’t quite pinpoint exactly when it would happen. Yesterday, as I was watching the media coverage of the meeting in Alaska between President Trump and Vladimir Putin, the day finally arrived. I realized I no longer had any trust whatsoever, not only in the media commentary surrounding the event, but the stagecraft that was unfolding in front of my eyes. Even if what was happening was transparent and true I couldn’t bring myself to believe anything good and lasting would come out of it.
I’m not alone. Polls are revealing that public trust in institutions and the government are now at historic lows. This poll from The State of Public Trust in Government revealed only 23% of American citizens polled say they trust the Federal government. I think a lot of us are beginning to feel this fatigue from decades of bipartisan half-truths, corruption, and straight out lies.
I keep asking myself, How do we even recover from this? As a GenX’r I was raised in a time when you just took for granted that what was being reported in the media was the truth. I was sixteen years old during the Iran-Contra hearings of 1987 and they were the first crack in my thick shell of ignorance. What came out in these hearings began to make me start questioning long-held beliefs which were often drilled into our heads in elementary school. There was still a whole lot of nationalist propaganda that was part of our every day curriculum in the 1970’s. The history books are written by the victors, after all.
Then the Housing Crisis of 2008 sent me down an immense rabbit hole that forced me to question everything I thought I knew about the institutions and politicians I blindly trusted. A lot of world-changing things came out of these years of crisis—the Occupy Wall Street Movement, Cypherpunks, and Wikileaks just to name a few. The more I learned, the more I realized a majority of the twentieth century was filled with lies and deceit. There was no real black and white but, rather, a billion shades of gray.
As that twentieth century progressed, the lies only became bigger and bolder. The culmination of these lies created a kind of divergence. This was a point where true reality and the narrative portrayed on the surface and in the media became two entirely different worlds with different sets of rules—one for the ruling class and one for everyone else. Do as I say, not as I do became the norm. Maybe it was always this way? I can’t say for sure.
Today people are waking up in record numbers. Independent media has risen mightily from the ashes of the dying mainstream media. Things are beginning to change, this much is apparent. How long will it take for The Age of Distrust to completely fade into the annals of an extremely dark chapter of our history? Perhaps public trust will never be earned back completely. Maybe an evergreen and healthy distrust is a good thing, this creates an organic system of checks and balances involving each and every one of us. Maybe the psyche-profiles of those who grow up with the deep yearning to be in those seats of power really shouldn’t ever be trusted?
Best case scenario, I think it’s going to take a long while for CEOs, the media, and our elected officials to earn back the public trust but the sooner the truth and transparency begins, the more quickly that trust will be rebuilt. This long journey out of the Age of Distrust into the Age of Truth, I suspect, won’t be a short or an easy one. It might not even happen in my lifetime. Some of this rests on the shoulders of each of us. It’s the responsibility of us all to divorce ourselves from mainstream media, not to worship and blindly trust politicians, and to take on the responsibility of seeking out the truth for ourselves.
I don’t consider myself to be solely on the side of the Conservatives or the Liberals but, rather, on the side of truth. I’m going to support and defend that truth no matter what side of the aisle I see glimpses of it on. I slowly see an America coalescing that, perhaps, is a little smarter—one that doesn't come down with election-induced amnesia every four years where we believe this time will be different, one that isn't so easily fooled. At least I hope so, for the sake of us all.
Thomas Jefferson is credited with saying, "The government you elect is the one you deserve." It's up to us to educate ourselves and become more invested and engaged in this political process so we can root out the corruption wherever it lives and create a government that the very best versions of ourselves deserve.
All for now. Thanks for reading.