Several years ago, we had the privilege of playing for a wedding in France. My French is not very good, so I was only able to pick up on some of what the Priest had to say. He used the word, “confiance,” in his homily – confiance – confidence, or trust seemed to be the main theme. He mentioned trust in God, and trust in each other, among other ideas. Obviously, trust is as an extremely important part of any marriage. It seems to me the same point could be made about life in general. Everything can rise, or fall, based on trust or distrust. In a marriage, even a single breach can require years to mend, and then only if the other person offers forgiveness and a second chance. I suppose, if my French were better, I might have learned that one of the Priest’s points was to encourage the young couple to speak and act in such a way as to become worthy of each other’s trust.
It is dangerous to risk public confidence for political gain. God knows there are already numerous occasions when people just make mistakes. Yet, as some would have it, even though most of the time things go well, a few failures are all it takes to accuse a whole enterprise of being a disaster perpetrated by the deep state. In the 1980’s we began to hear that “the government is the problem” on a regular basis. True, some people in government make mistakes, as they do in any organization, but to characterize the whole thing as bad when most parts of it are doing a pretty good job is unfair. Yes, our government can and should do better, but that does not make it inherently evil.
It is not logical to characterize the whole by a relatively small part. Simply put, it’s a fallacy to assert that some is the same as all. In a marriage, we can erode trust by using words such as “always” and “never.” As in, “you always do this,” or “you never do that,” especially when most of the time, the opposite is true. The USPS must deliver over 500 million of pieces of mail each day. It is unfair to accuse the postal service of being incompetent just because a relative few of us didn’t get our mail on time. To me, it seems like a miracle to put a stamp on an envelope and get a letter delivered anywhere in the world for pocket change. I could get in a car or a plane and take it there myself, but that could cost hundreds of times more. In this case, I’d say government is mostly good. Maybe we should fix the bad parts before concluding that things will “always” be this way or we’re “never” going to have good government.
Those who unfairly criticize government or promote irrational conspiracy theories run the risk of shattering public confidence. I was taught to argue honestly, not to exaggerate, distort, or lie in order to win. Anyone can defeat the “straw man” they created to attack their opponent. We once had a neighbor who told me our dog barked, “all the time,” which of course shouldn’t happen. I conceded he barked at times that were inconvenient to her, but certainly not “all the time,” or even most of the time. When I suggested she was exaggerating, she accused me of calling her a liar. It’s easy to resent the other side for pointing out our dishonesty, but much more difficult to have an honest discussion that can build trust.
Historian and author Kenneth Clark wrote,
“It took Gibbon six volumes to describe the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, so I shan’t embark on that. But thinking about this almost incredible episode does tell one something about the nature of civilization. It shows that however complex and solid it seems, it is actually quite fragile. It can be destroyed. What are its enemies? Well, first of all, fear – fear of war, fear of invasion, fear of plague and famine, that make it simply not worthwhile constructing things, or planting trees or even planning next year’s crops. And fear of the supernatural, which means that you daren’t question anything or change anything. The late antique world was full of meaningless rituals, mystery religions, that destroyed self-confidence. And then exhaustion, the feeling of hopelessness which can overtake people even with a high degree of material prosperity…Of course, civilization requires a modicum of material prosperity – enough to provide a little leisure. But, far more, it requires confidence – confidence in the society in which one lives, belief in its philosophy, belief in its laws, and confidence in one’s own mental powers. The way in which the stones of the Pont du Gard are laid is not only a triumph of technical skill but shows a vigorous belief in law and discipline. Vigor, energy, vitality: all the great civilizations – or civilizing epochs – have had a weight of energy behind them. People sometimes think that civilization consists in fine sensibilities and good conversation and all that. These can be among the agreeable results of civilization, but they are not what make a civilization, and a society can have these amenities and yet be dead and rigid. So, if one asks why the civilization of Greece and Rome collapsed, the real answer is that it was exhausted.”
I am concerned we are living through a time of declining confidence – in our institutions, our religions, our scientific and technological abilities, our laws, lawmakers, courts, and leaders, and most of all, in the truth itself. When too many people throw up their hands and say they just don’t know what is true anymore, we will have entered an era in which whatever the strongest and richest say is accepted as true. Whatever can be said the earliest, loudest, and most often will become the truth, regardless of objective facts or logic. Members of Congress play a dangerous game when they try to destroy what little confidence we have left, either by fallacious references to “evil” on the other side or by attempts to make the government run worse so they can cynically claim that “government is the problem” while doing nothing to fix it. They are like the fool who saws off the branch he is sitting on and acts surprised when he crashes to the ground, except they risk crashing the system they have pledged to uphold and reform. I hope we will realize the danger before too much confidence is lost.
MurrayWorks 