When Government No Longer Has Faith In Its People

So many tons of ink have been used writing about how ordinary people no longer trust our government in America. And why not? Government, from the president on down, has too often given us good reason not to trust them. Could it be, though, that our distrust of them stems at least in part from their distrust of us?

The main frame of reference that I have is what I’ve observed over 70 years of life in these (once) United States. Although I’m sure that the government fudged the truth on many an occasion prior to November 22, 1963, the Kennedy assassination seems to be the watershed event that we can point to as the start of lying as a way of political life in modern times. The Warren Commission report on the assassination is seen by a majority of Americans as a whitewash of who was behind the murder of the popular American president. Later, we were lied to repeatedly about the Vietnam War - in terms of what progress was being made, how long and intensive our commitment there was to be, and what our objectives were (which we wondered if even the government knew). Then came Watergate which, although overblown in my opinion, still caused a massive erosion of trust in the presidency, started by LBJ’s conduct of the war and intensified by Nixon’s continuation of an increasingly unpopular war and his inability to deal maturely with those he saw as “enemies.”

In the meantime, our cultural institutions, including the churches, universities, and entertainment, also lost credibility with the public. But why? Aren’t all of these institutions made up of people, most of whom have good intentions? These days, one cannot be blamed for questioning that premise.

The Democrats of today use the term “democracy” with purpose as they do all of their pet terms that serve to obfuscate their true intentions. A real democracy is a form of government that dismisses the hopes and dreams of a significant minority in favor of a majority, regardless of how sizeable (or not) the majority is. In contrast, the Founders of this nation wisely designed our representative form of government to recognize that although each person has value and dignity (even though this was not extended to non-white people at the time), there is a place for majority rule (the House of Representatives) but also for more equal representation for all (the Senate).

In contrast, communists don’t acknowledge the value and dignity of the individual. Rather, their focus is on the collective and how large groups can be forced to conform to what the communists want. Implicit in this philosophy is a lack of regard for the individual, which is another way of saying that the communist has little or no faith in the individual except to act as a minor cog in the system. It’s not surprising that Vladimir Lenin, one of the architects of the Soviet Union, referred even to those who supported the communist revolution as “useful idiots.” This contempt for the intelligence and uniqueness of each citizen is demonstrated by the constant lying and stretching of the truth we’re subjected to daily, mostly by politicians but followed closely by “mainstream” media, entertainers, and social media “influencers”, etc. Today’s Democratic Party exemplifies the communist way of thinking by looking at people as various voting blocs instead of as individuals.

It seems that Jack Nicholson’s infamous line from the movie A Few Good Men, “You can’t handle the truth!” expresses what our elites think in deciding that lying to us is doing us a favor. For instance, take the $34 trillion of national debt that the government is outwardly not concerned about, to the point of refusing to do anything to address it. This enables them to keep kicking the can of facing the problem further down the road to an eventual disaster. The treatment of Donald Trump as “an existential threat to democracy” is a big lie designed to turn people away from Trump as a serious presidential candidate. We are being treated like children who must have horrific consequences either hidden (as with the national debt) or grossly exaggerated (Trump) to ensure we vote for the appropriate candidates. That, plus the constant ploy to keep the masses entertained with the latest soundbites and scandals instead of presenting anything of real substance, should tell us a lot about how the elites view us ordinary citizens. And if the government has lost that much faith in “we, the people” then this great experiment in a self-governing citizenry is indeed coming to an end, unless there is a drastic course correction.