Who Can Be Trusted?
One damning revelation or disastrous folly after another has completely eroded our collective trust
Seeing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testify before members of Congress felt eerily familiar.
In fact, it was a near-perfect summation of America in the 21st century—a sordid tale of hubris and misadventure.
Predictably, the chatter following the hearings centered on Facebook's stock, legislators' bumbling line of questioning, and personal privacy in the digital age. All are legitimate talking points, no doubt. But the never-ending desire to declare winners and losers simply confirms the cynics' point.
At its core, the Zuckerberg-Facebook tangle was yet another example of a recurring American dynamic: one institution/power center that's lost the public's trust lecturing to another institution/power center that's also lost the public's trust.
Here's a list of institutions, as tracked by Gallup, in which at least 50 percent of respondents in 2017 said they have a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence:
The military (72 percent)
Small business (70 percent)
The police (57 percent)
Three others made the cut 20 years ago, but have since fallen off:
The church or organized religion (59 percent)
The presidency (53 percent)
Supreme Court (50 percent)
The rest, from public schools to banks to organized labor, languish in the 20s and 30s. A good year for Congress means they're in double digits.
I know I've touched on this topic before, but I believe it to be the defining story of America today. In the space of two decades, one damning revelation or disastrous folly after another has completely eroded our collective trust. The Iraq War, a self-inflicted debt crisis, and crumbling infrastructure have tarnished government. Wall Street will be forever tied to the Great Recession. A widespread sex abuse scandal still hangs over the Catholic Church. The media blew the 2016 election. Our own doctors, aided by pharmaceutical companies, have fueled the opioid epidemic. While law enforcement maintains significant support despite increased media attention of the stark racial disparity in police shootings, growing awareness of mass incarceration and its awful legacy has exposed the rot at the core of our criminal justice system.
And now Silicon Valley giants, once lauded as saviors, have had their platforms overrun by Russian bots and other shady actors out to manipulate our personal data? It's hard to keep up at this point.
Of course, some of this explains Trump's original appeal. His rise was a middle finger to every institution that let us down, every expert who mislead us, every promise that went unfulfilled. He's no cure to what ails America, but charlatans like him will find a home in politics as long as our grave trust gap gets wider.
1. Was it worth it, Paul?
"Paul Ryan, who once aspired to advance the vision of conservative icon Jack Kemp, will leave Washington carrying a more tarnished legacy—as the most important enabler of Donald Trump." | Paul Ryan, Trump Enabler
2. Law and order, except for me, my family, my business, my lawyer, my cronies...
"A political movement that rails against 'immigrant crime' while defending alleged abusers and child molesters is one that has stopped pretending to have any universalist aspirations." | What 'Law and Order' Means to Trump
"Krasner instructed his prosecutors to now add up and justify the exact costs of every single person sentenced to a crime in Philadelphia... The annual cost of incarceration, Krasner reminded his prosecutors, was currently more per year than the beginning salary of teachers, police officers, firefighters, social workers, addiction counselors, and even prosecutors in his office." | Philadelphia DA Promised a Criminal Justice Revolution. He’s Exceeding Expectations.
3. Step away from the screen (after you read this email)
"For a long time, I convinced myself that a childhood spent immersed in old-fashioned books would insulate me somehow from our new media climate – that I could keep on reading and writing in the old way because my mind was formed in pre-internet days. But the mind is plastic – and I have changed. I'm not the reader I was." | I have forgotten how to read
"... merely having their smartphones out on the desk led to a small but statistically significant impairment of individuals’ cognitive capacity — on par with effects of lacking sleep." | Having Your Smartphone Nearby Takes a Toll on Your Thinking
"Candidates, voters, and pundits, enthralled with the geek’s promise of omniscience, rush to buy in—at least until it’s used by someone they don’t like. Cambridge Analytica is as much a symptom of democracy’s sickness as its cause." | Our Lives Inside the Surveillance Machine