If I remember correctly, in the 1960's, the CIA wrote some papers about countries who converted from Authoritarianism to Democracy and that the process took at least 20 years and was usually the most violent and bloodiest period of that country's history. To my mind, this process took so long because it was fundamentally a generational process; the old generation that understood "the old way" of doing things needed to pass away (and their old way of doing things) before a new generation rose up to be able to trust the new process (and the new way of doing things).
As for Trump, everything he is accusing anyone else of doing is a pathological self-own because he accuses everyone else of exactly what he is trying to do. He says "the Dems are trying to rig the elections" -- except that is exactly what *he* is trying to do.
This Orwellian up-is-down and down-is-up will take years to fix. Might I guess at least 20?
But maybe we should take it a step further, in that this Orwellian frame of mind is shared by the new Axis of Evil (Russia, China, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, etc) and pushed very hard by them. Our globalized world has made these into universal and connected problems.
Globalization is creating a mono-culture and the weaknesses of mono-cultures are known. Are we making another run at leaping the barrier to a more fully globalized world? It would seem to me that every time we have tried this before it has ended in a war. (Not that I am against globalization.)
Fundamentally, Trump is not smart enough to be *the* cause for any of this, he is merely the opportunistic figurehead for a lot of other people. And, given this strain of thought has existed to various degrees for *many decades* (e.g. Lindburg in the 1920's) I don't think it's going to go away without a significant shock to stomp it down. I think a case could be made that this reactionary population is one tail of the bell curve and will always be with us. But social media has given them a voice and a community to draw on.
I pray God will help us beat back the Christian Nationalists. ;-)
Trump has indeed eroded trust, but pre-Trump erosion of trust, especially related to official handling of 2008-2009 crisis, opened the door for Trump. Official response to COVID has contributed as well, confirming for many that once-trusted sectors like public health are suspect.
I am just not sure about this. Would you trust a society founded on slavery, resting on stolen land, and predicated on unnecessary rights, like the right to bear arms and the right to private property, while eschewing the truly essential rights, like a right to housing?
I suspect that the decline of legitimacy is always a team sport.
No man is an island. No man can possibly be an island. We live in a civilization with rules and standards of conduct. We *need* each other. Everything is a team sport to some degree. American rugged individualism is, at best, aspirational, at worst very corrosive. But it is an acknowledgment of our base human nature of competition. Our system harnesses these base needs, proscribes the excesses, and points them in constructive directions. The issue is not "how bad things were" but "look how good things are in spite of all that bad".
This is not just "rose colored glasses" and trying to move the goalposts.
Pessimism, at it's best, is a stop-loss viewpoint. But there is no up-side, no ability to gain, with a pessimistic view. Because, under a pessimistic view, no risk is taken, so there is no possibility of gain.
During the 20th century, several hundred million people were killed. Hitler was a light-weight compared to Stalin and Mao. Yet in spite of all that disaster and destruction, human longevity is up, technology is up, hunger is down, poverty is down, violence is down (until Putin pushed it up again).
Don't be captive to your own ethnocentrism and judge humanity by your view of the US. On the whole, humanity is on a huge rise. Pessimism is unfounded.
As some others have pointed out over time, this erosion of trust in our government goes back at least to our disastrous involvement in Vietnam, not so much because of the military disaster itself, but because of the consistent pattern of lies told by our government about its progress. The publishing of the Pentagon Papers and the Tet offensive blew the lid off of those lies, but did nothing to mitigate either the needless loss of lives (over 50,000 of my generation and the far greater Vietnamese losses) or the erosion of trust, particularly in the Johnson and Nixon administrations.
Nixon himself added to the increasing mistrust with both his notorious Southern Strategy and Watergate. Ford then failed to bring him to the bar, leaving a legacy of unfinished justice.
Ronald Reagan continued to erode that trust with his constant accusations of government overreach then with the Iran Contra debacle.
9/ll momentarily brought us together (as Pearl Harbor had done in another era of division), but G H W Bush and his successors and their generals then went back decieving us about both the reasons for and the process of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
So Trump had a fertile field in which to spread his manure. I agree that of all the forces causing our mistrust of both government and each other he has been the most corrosive single force in our increasing polarization and mistrust; possibly the most corrosive force attributable to one man in our history. But we have to remember that he was and continues to be enabled by a political party which at least ever since Barry Goldwater’s campaign has worked to divide us and to erode trust in our institutions, whose leaders clearly recognized the threat Trump posed as soon as he came down that damned escalator, said so publicly, and then continued to bend the knee in their attempt to use him to further their own divisive agenda.
Behind and often below it all, the ongoing conservative reactions to Brown v Board, Roe v Wade, Engel v Vitale, Virgina v Loving, and Obergefell v Hodges have continued to divide us and further create mistrust and even hatred. Trump and his myrmidons have also been playing on that with skill.
As a former soldier, I am aware of a number of old phrases which IMO quite adequately describe this ongoing ---------, but I won’t repeat them here. I will only quote the cartoon character Pogo, “We have met the enemy, and he is us."
If I remember correctly, in the 1960's, the CIA wrote some papers about countries who converted from Authoritarianism to Democracy and that the process took at least 20 years and was usually the most violent and bloodiest period of that country's history. To my mind, this process took so long because it was fundamentally a generational process; the old generation that understood "the old way" of doing things needed to pass away (and their old way of doing things) before a new generation rose up to be able to trust the new process (and the new way of doing things).
As for Trump, everything he is accusing anyone else of doing is a pathological self-own because he accuses everyone else of exactly what he is trying to do. He says "the Dems are trying to rig the elections" -- except that is exactly what *he* is trying to do.
This Orwellian up-is-down and down-is-up will take years to fix. Might I guess at least 20?
But maybe we should take it a step further, in that this Orwellian frame of mind is shared by the new Axis of Evil (Russia, China, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, etc) and pushed very hard by them. Our globalized world has made these into universal and connected problems.
Globalization is creating a mono-culture and the weaknesses of mono-cultures are known. Are we making another run at leaping the barrier to a more fully globalized world? It would seem to me that every time we have tried this before it has ended in a war. (Not that I am against globalization.)
Fundamentally, Trump is not smart enough to be *the* cause for any of this, he is merely the opportunistic figurehead for a lot of other people. And, given this strain of thought has existed to various degrees for *many decades* (e.g. Lindburg in the 1920's) I don't think it's going to go away without a significant shock to stomp it down. I think a case could be made that this reactionary population is one tail of the bell curve and will always be with us. But social media has given them a voice and a community to draw on.
I pray God will help us beat back the Christian Nationalists. ;-)
Trump has indeed eroded trust, but pre-Trump erosion of trust, especially related to official handling of 2008-2009 crisis, opened the door for Trump. Official response to COVID has contributed as well, confirming for many that once-trusted sectors like public health are suspect.
I am just not sure about this. Would you trust a society founded on slavery, resting on stolen land, and predicated on unnecessary rights, like the right to bear arms and the right to private property, while eschewing the truly essential rights, like a right to housing?
I suspect that the decline of legitimacy is always a team sport.
What is your basis for determining which rights are necessary and which are unnecessary?
No man is an island. No man can possibly be an island. We live in a civilization with rules and standards of conduct. We *need* each other. Everything is a team sport to some degree. American rugged individualism is, at best, aspirational, at worst very corrosive. But it is an acknowledgment of our base human nature of competition. Our system harnesses these base needs, proscribes the excesses, and points them in constructive directions. The issue is not "how bad things were" but "look how good things are in spite of all that bad".
This is not just "rose colored glasses" and trying to move the goalposts.
Pessimism, at it's best, is a stop-loss viewpoint. But there is no up-side, no ability to gain, with a pessimistic view. Because, under a pessimistic view, no risk is taken, so there is no possibility of gain.
During the 20th century, several hundred million people were killed. Hitler was a light-weight compared to Stalin and Mao. Yet in spite of all that disaster and destruction, human longevity is up, technology is up, hunger is down, poverty is down, violence is down (until Putin pushed it up again).
Don't be captive to your own ethnocentrism and judge humanity by your view of the US. On the whole, humanity is on a huge rise. Pessimism is unfounded.
As some others have pointed out over time, this erosion of trust in our government goes back at least to our disastrous involvement in Vietnam, not so much because of the military disaster itself, but because of the consistent pattern of lies told by our government about its progress. The publishing of the Pentagon Papers and the Tet offensive blew the lid off of those lies, but did nothing to mitigate either the needless loss of lives (over 50,000 of my generation and the far greater Vietnamese losses) or the erosion of trust, particularly in the Johnson and Nixon administrations.
Nixon himself added to the increasing mistrust with both his notorious Southern Strategy and Watergate. Ford then failed to bring him to the bar, leaving a legacy of unfinished justice.
Ronald Reagan continued to erode that trust with his constant accusations of government overreach then with the Iran Contra debacle.
9/ll momentarily brought us together (as Pearl Harbor had done in another era of division), but G H W Bush and his successors and their generals then went back decieving us about both the reasons for and the process of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
So Trump had a fertile field in which to spread his manure. I agree that of all the forces causing our mistrust of both government and each other he has been the most corrosive single force in our increasing polarization and mistrust; possibly the most corrosive force attributable to one man in our history. But we have to remember that he was and continues to be enabled by a political party which at least ever since Barry Goldwater’s campaign has worked to divide us and to erode trust in our institutions, whose leaders clearly recognized the threat Trump posed as soon as he came down that damned escalator, said so publicly, and then continued to bend the knee in their attempt to use him to further their own divisive agenda.
Behind and often below it all, the ongoing conservative reactions to Brown v Board, Roe v Wade, Engel v Vitale, Virgina v Loving, and Obergefell v Hodges have continued to divide us and further create mistrust and even hatred. Trump and his myrmidons have also been playing on that with skill.
As a former soldier, I am aware of a number of old phrases which IMO quite adequately describe this ongoing ---------, but I won’t repeat them here. I will only quote the cartoon character Pogo, “We have met the enemy, and he is us."