The Death of Social Trust — and How to Revive It

It’s time to face the sad, pathetic truth head-on: today, most Americans have defective-to-nonexistent ‘bullshit detectors.’ As a familiar, irreverent saying puts it, most of us “wouldn’t recognize the truth if it came up and bit ’em in the ass.” As a result, we suffer from a painful, destructive truth deficit and its dark corollary, an intensifying trust deficit.

But that’s a really huge problem, isn’t it? HUGE. It’s a full-scale national disaster. How can you run any society wisely and effectively when many of its citizens are ill-informed, distrustful, paranoid, and/or willfully oppositional? For that matter, how can anyone run their own lives effectively when they have no idea what’s really true, or what information to trust, or who or what to put their trust in?

I think it’s safe to say that everyone puts his/her trust in something — whether that’s God, a political leader, mainstream news, democracy, one’s family doctor, skeptical thinking, ‘true love,’ Fox News, a preacher, science, sports, or [fill in the blank]. It’s also clear that throughout the US, we’re experiencing frequent and often violent reminders that who or what we place our trust in can have the gravest consequences, ranging from wonderful to utterly horrific.

Take our current super-divisive and super-deceptive politics. The issue of trust and distrust is definitely center stage here. Our extreme ideological divide has gotten so out of hand that fully 1/3 of our citizens can never agree with the other 2/3 about anything, even basic public information that used to be accepted common knowledge — such as how elections and voting actually work, and how they’re quite trustworthy because our laws always include numerous safeguards ensuring the fairness and accuracy of our elections.

The Trump/MAGA ‘distrust factory’

Yet despite all these practical precautions, distrust and paranoia now reign supreme anyway — because this crucial civic information has been intentionally buried by the far right, in pursuit of several very unsavory, even un-American, goals: they aim to cripple democracy and bend it to the far right’s will.

This manufactured partisan rancor and distrust over voting and elections has been relentlessly amplified by our current president, Donald Trump, ever since the run-up to the 2020 election. And over the past five years, his toxic election hoax, aka “The Big Lie,” and the election paranoia he promotes just kept going and going like a crazed Energizer bunny.

Now, a full 5+ years after losing that election, Trump is still trying desperately to ‘prove’ that there was massive fraud. He’s so obsessed with ‘proving’ fraud that he just had the FBI raid election offices in Fulton County, Georgia, to confiscate 75+ boxes of election records! This, despite the fact that two full recounts, many limited recounts, and many fraud investigations all came up with … nothing. NO significant fraud.

Here’s the crucial information most of us still don’t seem to grasp: Trump is a pathological liar who will do and say anything to get his way and ‘win,’ even if it involves fraud and gaslighting the public. He is an incredibly paranoid and willful person whose only goal is personal power and always ‘winning.’ And he is utterly amoral in his dark quest; truth and morality mean nothing to him. This has become totally obvious over the past decade.

Thus, Trump and MAGA have deliberately fostered massive distrust in our democracy and election systems. His (and their) constant blizzard of lies and disinformation is the primary factor behind America’s agonizing trust deficit. Yet, their nonsense is actually easy to counter and disprove, IF one seeks out true, factual information and has a functioning ‘bullshit detector.’

For example, after the 2020 election, court after court — over 60(!) altogether — threw out all claims of fraud and election manipulation. Yet this factual, easily verifiable information doesn’t filter down to many Americans, who increasingly believe — with no valid proof whatsoever — that the last election really was ‘stolen’ via massive fraud.

The long, slow death of trust

Why is this happening? Why do so many Americans fervently believe so many things that are not true or accurate? Why have many Americans become so distrustful and paranoid?

Well, it’s been a long time coming. Back in the 1980s, President Reagan famously pushed the idea that Government is always the problem, never the solution. Conservatives latched onto this meme, and over time, it morphed into a bedrock belief for many Republicans: “Government is The Enemy”. Reagan very dramatically ‘threw out the baby with the bathwater.’ But … what replaced the ‘baby’, namely a workable and functional federal government?

Over the last several decades, maintaining a functional central government gradually gave way to unbridled capitalism, a declining middle class, a thriving billionaire class, and do-nothing politics riddled with political warfare, paranoia, and racial and class resentments. No wonder people have become so cynical!

Yet politically or socially progressive proposals were never trusted or tried, either, since they all led (supposedly) straight to that perennial conservative bugaboo, ‘socialism.’ Meanwhile, right-wing talk radio and then Fox ‘News’ and Facebook (now Meta) — “the hate/resentment industrial complex” — kept pandering to people’s anger and frustration. They deliberately kept people riled up and ever more paranoid and resentful of immigrants, Democrats, liberals, Obama, and whichever ‘elites’ were in power.

“Fake news” vs. “Truthful Trump”

Then along came Trump and his constant refrain that mainstream news and information are ALL “fake news”… capped by his self-serving insistence that the only information sources Americans can trust are far-right media and Trump himself. And many of us actually believed him.

Taken together, all these frightening developments stripped away our remaining trust, irrevocably tarnished the very idea of ‘truth,’ and left many Americans floundering in a dark cesspool of distrust and paranoia. We came to believe that we can’t ever trust our government, traditional news sources, mainstream media, politicians, our elections, election officials, educators, scientists, knowledgeable experts, or public health officials.

But mercifully, we can all trust “Truthful Trump,” right? (Cue agonized, hysterical laughter.) What utter BS! And voila, here we are, with fully 1/3 of Americans believing all the outlandish, paranoid, and manipulative crap that spews from Trump’s mouth or passes for ‘news’ on far-right media or Facebook/Meta posts.

Now, I’m not saying that mainstream media or progressive news sources are always totally accurate and unbiased, or that Democratic or progressive politicians are always truthful or socially responsible. Not at all. But I AM saying that, in general, they really ARE more accurate and truthful than right-wing media, and far less demagogic and manipulative.

The ongoing collapse of trust and truthfulness

This brings us back to our initial question: How can we get past all this corrosive craziness and back to a semi-sane way to run our society and even our own daily lives? How do we rebuild trust in our democratic systems and in more ‘objective’ and accurate news sources and websites?

To do this requires much honest self-evaluation and honest societal evaluation, and also a clear-eyed understanding of how propaganda and demagoguery actually work in practice here in America. Frighteningly, many Americans don’t seem to have the slightest idea of how inflammatory and demagogic most far-right pundits have been these past few years. If you watch Fox ‘News’ or Newsmax, you usually hear very little of the actual ongoing news covered by mainstream media and by regional newspapers.

Instead, it’s replaced by demagoguery, race-baiting, hateful messaging, and intense disdain. What you actually get is boatloads of opinion, fear-mongering, anger, judgment, innuendo, sarcasm, white rage, and total paranoia about what’s happening in our nation. You also get vast amounts of distorted ‘news’ or fabricated information (aka disinformation) that’s at odds with the facts, whether we’re talking about vaccines, elections, deportation, voting, Democrats, (non-existent) fraud, etc.

The thing that’s crucial to realize is that constant disinformation and paranoia take a very high toll on us as individuals and as a society, and it’s all being propagated and disseminated for very dangerous ulterior motives.

The ultimate goal, it seems, is the eventual overthrow of our current social order and way of governing, and the replacement of our current system with a more malleable pseudo-government that’s far easier to manipulate — in order to seamlessly install and perpetuate one-party (conservative and far-right) theocratic rule. The classic separation of church and state would be quickly dissolved so that white ‘Christians’ — the minority — could rule over the rest of us.

Required: a dumbed-down, fearful, and enraged populace

Ensuring that this theocratic dominance comes to fruition requires a dumbed-down, fearful, and resentful populace that constantly feels wronged and believes their country is being “stolen from them.” They must be kept vulnerable to the soaring promises and devious machinations of populist demagogues.

Additionally — and this is also crucial to the overarching far-right game plan — these highly-indoctrinated, enraged “sheeple” can no longer discern the difference between truth and overt lies, or between true public service and hypocritical demagoguery, or between actual facts/truth and made-up ‘alternative facts.’ Their inner ‘bullshit detectors’ — which most of us gradually develop as we get older — have been short-circuited or purposely dismantled.

Scarily, the far right has been VERY successful in creating the dumbed-down, pliant, and paranoid audience it has sought to mold. Yet despite their many potent successes, conservatives also relentlessly push their self-serving ‘victimization story’ that says conservatives are constantly in retreat and are always being censored and oppressed.

But the truth is actually much more the opposite. For decades, conservatives have been working really, really hard — often successfully — to censor and squash progressive, socially responsible voices and agendas. Of course, such propaganda about conservative voices always getting ‘canceled’ intentionally fosters more and more self-righteous rage, distrust, and paranoia in our right-leaning citizens.

The intended recipients of all this dangerous propaganda and disinformation — receptive, gullible Americans, that is — continue making, over and over again, the same fundamental and deadly mistake. They are willingly putting their faith and trust in exactly the wrong people, those who are the least trustworthy and the most manipulative and exploitative … and in their continual deceptions and machinations, as well, which are usually exactly the wrong ideas and policies to support (that is, if we want to have a functional, fair, and tolerant democracy).

They have been convinced to trust legions of unscrupulous bad actors, who pretend to be well-meaning, wholesome citizens as they work ceaselessly (both overtly and covertly) to undermine all the qualities and core ideals that once made our country the envy of the world. You know, little things like equality, equal opportunity, impartial justice, freedom of choice, fairness, open-mindedness, a free press, etc.

Can we rebuild trust and truthfulness?

So — given all this vicious demagoguery, the constant drumbeat of disinformation, and the rising threat of political violence … how can our society defend itself and not be destroyed from within?

Well, things are not looking good. It will take a rebirth of clear-thinking individuals who are willing to stand up for the truth and work to counteract the devastating tsunami of ruthless, utterly amoral demagogues and far-right instigators. It will take a huge tide of awakening and awareness surging through our society, focused on restoring truth, trust, and real freedom in our nation and all across our land.

This potential rebirth is quite far-fetched, sadly — but still possible. Today, it’s at least still possible.

In another year or two, though, even the possibility of saving our democratic republic may well vanish. It all depends on US — many, many more of us — waking up to the nefarious and underhanded ways we are being lied to and manipulated by far-right media and politicians … and then, working hard together to put a stop to it.

Somehow, we must find ways to restore interpersonal and intra-societal trust and cooperation. It is not optional or a merely ‘partisan’ issue. It is truly a vital, and currently unmet, need. And filling that need is essential — for all of us.

That’s the only viable path forward. That’s the only way our liberal democracy can survive this accelerating shit-storm.