Trust In Government? A Classic American Oxymoron

Given our nation’s seminal creative impulse to absolve its ties to our former governmental authority, is it really so surprising that the citizenry has a general distrust of the currently enthroned self-proclaimed mentally-absentee leadership: Congress, the civil service and the Administration? Unfortunately, yes it is surprising; in fact, we Americans don’t distrust our Government enough. It may be true at this moment that sentiments are running unusually high in terms of “public distrust” toward the Government. But during economic bad times, this is a very typical reaction on the part of the public. Citizens are under increased and unrelenting periods of stress and they are doing what all mature, informed and self-aware sentient beings will do in such circumstances. The public will lash-out and seek to blame their troubles on anyone handy. And the public is likely to translate this lower-brain reaction into a “vote them out” impulsive reaction, whether this will in any way affect the conditions that are causal to the problems of our time.

Add to this a constant and unrelenting blitz of Armageddon-scale accusations and diatribes of disaster from the frustrated fanatics of the flawed and failed political party so recently booted from office and you get protests and anger. Sprinkle in a measure of this party’s self-deluded belief in their hereditary right to office and power as the only Americans that have a true understanding of an America founded on the Constitution, and you get the dysfunctional political system we see in effect today.

So where does this leave us?

It leaves us with the political parties jockeying for position to regain or retain the political supremacy that they need as desperately as a drug-addict needs their fix. And it leaves us with a citizenry that collectively avoids the one, single and absolute truth about the source of our American problems. That is that our problems are a failure of our own making, and of our own irresponsibility; and of our own stupidity. We have ‘trusted’ ourselves over the years to elect the members of Congress and the Presidents from the “best and brightest” from both parties. We have demanded that these sage leaders present us with lower taxes and a higher standard of living. We let them sell us out to any special interest group that pays better than the last one; and we believe their self-righteous proclamations that they are only interested in serving the public and the country, and that only they share the America values that made this country great. And depending on your party affiliation, you unquestioningly trust yours and just as unquestioningly distrust the other’s.

The morale of this story is that the problem we have in America is that the public trusts the Government, at least when it’s their Government; and they trust it far too much. They don’t think about, don’t evaluate, don’t critique, and don’t challenge their party leaders. The party faithful have bought into one or more of the party’s key issues, and they have sold themselves to anyone who assures them that those issues will be delivered at any cost. At that point the politicians are free to carry out whatever schemes they choose to line their own or their close associates’ pockets, and to betray the very American values that are enshrined in the Constitution.

We don’t have a high distrust for the Government today. We have angry people. They won’t face up to the problems that they have evaded for years, and they will continue to evade for as long as they are allowed. But eventually, the consequences of their self-imposed blindness will be irresistible. Public debt cannot go unpaid forever, entitlements cannot be paid when there is no treasure in the Treasury, and budgets cannot be balanced when you lie about what you are spending.

Americans need to learn to not trust the Government all the time; whether things are good or bad, and whether the Republicans and Democrats are in the majority. They also need to stop trusting that the political parties have the answers to America’s problems. If they did have answers that were even close to being right, we would not be where we are today.