Today’s post is penned by our own NRPax.
In Thomas Sowell’s book Black Rednecks and White Liberals, he touched on the concept of “High Trust” vs. “Low Trust” societies. To put it simply, this refers to how much trust we show each other in our interactions. Despite everything going on right now, our nation is still one of high trust. There are still places we don’t lock our doors, we think nothing of loaning things to neighbors and we don’t worry when we set appointments or do business.
With trust, a lot can be accomplished. It’s one of the foundations of a strong society and has played a part in how successful our country has been in a relatively short period of time. But as of late, that high trust has eroded. The word trust is now greeted with eye rolls or immediate suspicion. Who and what we trust has been reduced to a small handful of people or businesses.
The problem is that the institutions that we are supposed to trust are failing in their duties. They are expected to act in a manner that earns our trust instead of having it just granted to them by virtue of their station.
Politicians. Disregarding whether or not those people have ever earned trust, they are still expected to conduct themselves in a certain way. Unlike other governments, they are not God’s holy agents on Earth. They are just another person in this nation, albeit with a bit more power. The protest on January 6th was upsetting to them because the people they were supposed to serve had the audacity to speak out.
Reporters. For the past several decades, reporters have viewed themselves as an elite caste. Remember the pearl-clutching when Donald Trump called them “enemy of the people”? They go out of their way to prove him right every day. The internet has leveled the playing field despite their best gatekeeping efforts and people are able to get their news from other sources.
Celebrities. OK, I’m clueless at how being able to pretend you are someone else when a camera is rolling makes you an authority on anything. The only celebrities I can respect are the ones who avoid lecturing us on how we should be living.
Teachers. This is a group we should be able to trust without reservation. But one of the ugly things that came out from the plague is that they are the last group of people we should let near children. They think that the children in their care are their property and any parent who dares to question them gets attacked.
So what is the solution? All right; my knee jerk response is asking Richard Branson if he’s up for the idea of a mass airlift of these people to a space station built by Elon Musk with funding by Jeff Bezos. But I’m not in control.
We have to start reminding them that their position in life is at our sufferance. No feelings are to be spared in this; when they get huffy about us treating them the way they get treated us, they get ignored. The politicians get thrown out of office, the reporters are told to pound sand, celebrities find themselves without an audience and teachers go back to teaching instead of converting children to their poison religion. Find alternate ways of doing business and teach these people that if they want to conduct business, they have to behave.
