Trust is democracy’s sinew. Without it its laws are ludicrous, its polices, practices, or procedures as forceless as disconnected bones. If justice can be bought, why waste effort defining it? If facts are fictive, why discuss? Tyrants distrust trust for it enables individuals to combine against them, endangering their rule. Armies can only function if soldiers trust.
The Nameless One’s strength is predicated on the systematic destruction of trust. Trust is for suckers, losers, weaklings. Manly men impose, to hell with laws. The Constitution and all statutes are mere tools to bend to get their way. A government “of the people, by the people, for the people” – you’re kidding, right? The government belongs to the guy on top, he can do what he likes. The puny puling “people” either put up or shut up.
Does everyone in the Nameless One’s gang believe this? Maybe not. But any with contrary views keep mum. Maybe some destruction of democracy is necessary in the short term, to reorder priorities, then we can resume the system our founders and a quarter millennium of tradition had in mind. Not to worry!
Only trust, alas, is a crystal vase, easily shattered, difficult to restore.
Recently I engaged in a dialogue with a reader which startled me. A recently retired professor of literature, she and I revered similar authors and could cite the same texts. Happy days. But then our intercourse veered into our civil war, which can’t be helped in this dire hour. Suddenly my cordial correspondent exploded into a haranguing harridan, accusing me of ignorance, misogyny, condescension, grotesque opinions, confinement in an impenetrable bubble and heaven knows what else. Her words were big but their content bigotry, enraged, implacable, fierce. I slammed my door against these gale-force gusts, yet on they howled. The hurricane seems to have passed. If she recognizes herself in this paragraph, how come she’s reading me? Masochism, I guess. Such is the divisive ferocity the Nameless One intends. Bashing one another we won’t notice his mischief.
Absence of trust disables discussion, thus legislation. Laws in a democracy are determined by debate, not fiat. But if your opponent is a lying monster, making up their facts, intent on your elimination, how can you discuss? There is no bridging such a gap with words. Kill or be killed – or ignore the fracas altogether.
The Nameless One has wrecked trust as swiftly and brutally as he has the White House. How, in the event of his defeat, do we repair it? He and his may fly to their Moscow dachas, but they will leave Distrust behind. From the charred ruins can we reconstruct “one nation… with liberty and justice for all”?
Maybe not – but we must try. From its inception two hundred and fifty years ago, the United States was a moral adventure, unprecedented in history and, in the eyes of Europe’s princes, sure to fail. Humans were not responsible collaborators but stupid sheep requiring herding – by shepherds who knew what was best.
Our success as a nation was a miracle – but not, as many of our smug citizenry assume, inevitable. For democracy to succeed, we the people needed to care and to take care. We need to learn to treat one another with respect and regard.
Trust is not a nice-to-have, but the precondition of democratic success. Without it, we must accede to the Rule of Force because the Rule of Law can never work. Success must not mean being rich but being good. Allow ourselves to become a nation of winners and losers and we all lose.