Who Do We Trust?
Ah, there’s that important word in our lives: trust.
We want to trust everybody. But it’s becoming more difficult to do so.
Trust is that state of a relationship when we feel comfortable about ourselves and those we know. We have friends and supporters, those we like to be around, and appreciate and trust them because we think they’ve earned it.
On the other hand, those that have not earned it or violated it, are those we are constantly on guard for because of our experience that trust in them is unwarranted.
Unfortunately, Americans trust in our institutions has fallen off the cliff. I wish I could say without good reason, but there are plenty of reasons this has happened.
Let’s have a look at trust in some major institutions.
Media
According to Gallup and Edelman, the public trust in mass media has fallen to new lows. The percent of Americans who trust the mass media has steadily fallen the last 25 years from 55% in 1998 to 40% now.
56% believe the media is reporting false news and exaggerating some news to purposely mislead the public. 58% percent feel that most news organizations do not care about reporting the truth and only want to support their political position or ideology.
Less than 30% trust social media platforms for reliable information.
Those who trust the media tend to agree with their narratives and commentary.
It’s a sad day when we don’t and can’t trust our ‘free press.” The majority of us feels the media has violated their own standards for reporting reliable, unbiased, and confirmed information. They have violated our trust and expectations to be the fourth pillar of democracy.
Government
Americans’ trust in the federal government’s handling of domestic problems has not strayed far from the record low of 35% in 2019.
At the same time, trust in handling international issues has plummeted from 48% to 39% since last year.
Broken down by branch, here’s the latest trust percentages as of last September:
Judicial – 54%
Executive – 44%
Legislative – 37%
The Executive branch has fallen further since then to the percentiles in the 30’s.
On average, Americans have much more trust in the state and local governments:
State – 57%
Local – 66%
Scientists
Pew reports trust in scientists and medical ‘experts’, once seemingly buoyed by their central role in addressing the coronavirus outbreak, is now below pre-pandemic levels.
The public’s share of a “great deal of confidence” in scientists to act in the public’s best interests is down by 10 percentage points from 39% in November 2020 to 29% now.
Similarly, a notably large – and growing – proportion of society appears to be rejecting the “expert” view of biased climatologists advancing the climate change agenda. Only 39% now express confidence in them. The reason for this loss of trust is based on past predictions of short-term impact that have not come to pass. Therefore, more people feel predictions about the future of the atmospheric world carry little they can trust. Those so-called scientists have cried wolf too many times to believe them when ‘wolf’ is cried again.
Public Education
From 2020 to 2021 confidence in our public schools has fallen 9 points to 32%. Trust was not widespread to begin with, and the numbers now are paltry.
Who do we trust to teach our children? Like so many examples of different systems for the ‘elite’ and the ‘proletariat,’ our public primary and secondary schools are seldom used by those with the privilege of status and income. They send their kids to private schools because they want (and get) better outcomes for their children than our public schools generally offer. That choice is not available to most parents.
At the same time, many of our public-school districts are heavy with expensive, tax supported bureaucracies. The major teachers’ unions seem less interested in hands-on teaching of the 3-R’s than teaching a curriculum supported by their respective administrations without ‘the noise’ of parental input or support.
Much of the same is now true of our colleges and universities.
Trust in people or institutions is lost completely when people begin to think the intent is to deceive. No one likes to being lied to.
It takes time to build trust, but once it’s violated, trust erodes extremely quickly. In fact, when we are assessing whether to trust a person, what we’re actually thinking about is whether they are trying to deceive us.
How do we turn the tables and require our institutions to be trustworthy?
The answer is a lot simpler than making it a reality. We didn’t get to a point of losing trust in them overnight.
But we start by insisting on transparency and removing the ‘woke’ ideologues from positions of responsibility – both elected and appointed – and in the media.
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Have a great and prosperous week.
Hug somebody.
References:
https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2022/02/15/americans-trust-in-scientists-other-groups-declines/
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2010/jun/21/trust-climate-scientists
https://news.gallup.com/poll/352316/americans-confidence-major-institutions-dips.aspx
SPIDER Bites
Last Monday was Pi day. You remember your high school geometry and “Pi r squared?” 3/14 – Pi = 3.14. The Greek letter π is commonly used to denote pi.
Aaron Rodgers made history last week for NFL salaries. The 38-year-old quarterback signed a $150M, 3-year contract. Wow!
The Federal Reserve raised interest rates by .25 points Wednesday, initiating the first of 5 increases expected this year. But – unwinding unprecedented monetary stimulus amid several exogenous factors like ongoing war and rampant inflation is not going to happen without risk to a now shaky economy. It will be a volatile year for investors. The job would be a lot less precarious if we would ‘drill, baby drill.’
The latest from the administration to ease the effect of high gas prices “due to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia” is to tax the oil companies at an amount “equal to 50 percent of the difference between the current price of a barrel of oil and the pre-pandemic average price per barrel between 2015 and 2019.” The tax collected would be sent to ‘consumers’ in quarterly installments. Who dreams this stuff up? The proposal – in addition to targeting private companies and ignoring the market – would make the supply situation in the US much worse. And high oil prices are not the result of the Russia/Ukraine war in the first place.
That additional tax on oil companies would boomerang and emulate the economic sanctions we put on Russia. Which country gets hurt the most?
As we’re inundated with coverage of the war and the plight of the Ukrainian people, we’re also served opinions of how bad Putin is and how heroic President Zelensky is – and hints the Ukraine military is somehow holding out. Just how many of our populace and our leaders think that Ukraine has a chance to stop the Russian military? Meanwhile, we have ‘hawks’ all over the place wanting us to get more directly involved. President Biden announced last week an additional $800M in military aid to Ukraine and signed a funding bill appropriating $13.6B more for Ukrainian aid. Escalation seems to be the order of the day.
Meanwhile 17% of Americans are willing to go to war with Russia. 75% say we should help Ukraine but do not support a direct war between the US and Russia – according to the oft cited Quinnipiac University poll last week. Attempting a no-fly zone would put us at war. Our Congressional leaders better be ready to put on fatigues because they may be the only ones here willing to put their lives where their provocative rhetoric is.
A ray of hope may be shining to stop the war in Ukraine. Zelensky has apparently offered Putin a pledge to remain a “neutral” country and not attempt to join NATO. The US could have avoided this conflict long ago by agreeing with Russia not to consider Ukraine becoming part of NATO. We don’t want Ukraine in NATO either. That’s all Putin wanted to begin with. We should be sitting down with Russia to work this out rather than all the ‘saber rattling’ going on.
An appellate court released Jesse Smollett from jail last week. Few lawyers know a legal reason to do so. The case might be overturned on the defense argument Smollett was a victim of double jeopardy. You will recall Chicago prosecutor, Kim Foxx, initially dismissed the 16 charges brought by a grand jury in exchange for community service.
What constitutional provision allows D.C. police to disallow truckers to enter the country’s Capital to protest? We – and every member of Congress – should be outraged – regardless of whether we support such a protest or not. It’s a flagrant violation of the 1st Amendment. What happened to the Constitution and the rule of law?
