8 ms·

I've spent a lot of years overseas, in third-world or developing countries, often torn by tribal or civil war, or other natural and man-made disasters. I have c

I've spent a lot of years overseas, in third-world or developing countries, often torn by tribal or civil war, or other natural and man-made disasters. I have come to realize how foundational trust is in a functioning economy and self-governing society. We in G8 nations often don't see it, like fish not thinking about water. I've been extremely concerned with the efforts of sub-groups in our societies attacking the foundations of trust. It's like watching people, on a boat at sea, tear up the hull for firewood... The irony is that the basic nature of people (the world over) really hasn't changed: people are msotly good and want to live in a healthy community. But culture, context, and experience can overrule those tendencies.

AndrewBissell 6y ago
> I've been extremely concerned with the efforts of sub-groups in our societies attacking the foundations of trust. I assume you're referring to the neocons who lied us into the war in Iraq (and keep us there to this day), the Wall Street bankers & executives who created the 2008 financial crisis and the politicians who bailed them out at the people's expense, the military/intelligence and tech industry figures who set up a vast domestic mass spying infrastructure and then hounded the people who leaked it into hiding or prison, and the media apparatus which has run cover for all these sorts of things, right? To me it often looks like a lot of what is described as "attacking trust" is actually just pointing out that it's already been worn down to a nub. We wouldn't have to deal with the emperor being naked if those darn troublemakers would just stop pointing out he's not wearing any clothes.
- jrexilius 6y ago
  No, actually I'm referring to groups on the left _and_ right. While popularizing the attacking of shared society and our systems foundations did start with the counter-culture left in the 60s, it has certainly become a bipartisan effort in recent decades.
  - AndrewBissell 6y ago
    All the things I mentioned were entirely bipartisan affairs. In fact, we just witnessed the president who initiated the Iraq War feted and lauded by the press for his appearance at the inauguration of a new president from the "opposing" party who enthusiastically endorsed that war as a Senator. The counterculture left is a very broad category, with some legitimate and organic elements mixed up with some very confused, self-indulgent, or aimlessly subversive ones. But it didn't fire the first shots in the attack on trust, not by a long shot.
  - klyrs 6y ago
    Not sure about your timeline; the 60s were predated by the McCarthy era.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    It would be a lot harder to attack them if they didn't provide such a basis for it. There was a time when journalists at least attempted to be independent: https://conversationswithslava.substack.com/p/coming-soon https://conversationswithslava.substack.com/p/coming-soon Glenn Greenwald: https://reason.com/2021/01/23/journalists-are-authoritarians/ https://reason.com/2021/01/23/journalists-are-authoritarians... > Did you vote for Donald Trump in the last election? > I didn't vote. It's ironic: That's the one old journalism trope that I agree with, which is that if you vote, you psychologically become too connected to a politician. I prefer to just keep my distance. They're a dying breed. And it was never the case that journalists were 100% objective and unbiased. That's impossible. But there was a point in time when they at least made the attempt. Avoided the appearance of impropriety. If you want people to trust you, try being trustworthy.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
      Glenn Greenwald's personal issues with (1) what he considers the appropriate relationship between journalism and "objectivity" and (2) his ability to maintain that relationship if he votes are not my problem. There are dozens/hundreds/thousands of journalists around the world who are perfectly capable of reporting in a way that is useful, insightful, factual, while still voting in elections. I don't want journalists that I read to avoid the appearance of impropriety, I want them to tell me about the world in ways that I can't find out for myself. And I want them to vote. I'm actually generally disgusted by meeting journalists who claim to not have opinions about the things they report on. I would hope that their opinions would be complex, because when you know enough about most things in the world, you realize that most things are pretty complicated and there generally aren't simple answers. But this BS of "I just try to report on what I find out, I don't really have an opinion" is, for me, a shorthand for "I'm too afraid of drawing conclusions about anything, which means I can't help my readers to do that either".
- lainga 6y ago
  > I assume you're referring to the neocons who ... Could you expand upon why? You mentioned your own perceptions on "attacking trust", but I didn't find much of that (or any assignment of blame to anyone) expressed in the parent comment.
  - AndrewBissell 6y ago
    The parent mentions "the efforts of sub-groups in our societies attacking the foundations of trust" so it seems pretty clear to me there's an assignment of blame to someone there. There's a bit of sarcasm in my reply in that, usually, when I see people doing that in regards to this topic, they're not referring to the sort ruinous, trust-eviscerating projects I cited, but rather to things like "misinformation" or "divisive rhetoric" which, when properly viewed in context, are more symptoms than causes.
- rayiner 6y ago
  Spying is something nearly every single person I know can get behind, on the left or right. I’ve never seen it bleed into real life lack of trust. Everything else on the other hand: https://news.yahoo.com/ex-gop-pollster-frank-luntz-172755768.html https://news.yahoo.com/ex-gop-pollster-frank-luntz-172755768... > “Bret, I couldn't control them. They just started yelling at each other, and it would take me two minutes to say to them, 'stop' - to put my hand up to the camera like I did right there for them to get control of themselves," Luntz said
  - AndrewBissell 6y ago
    Heh, thanks for the link, there's a certain dark enjoyment in seeing Luntz reap what he has sown.
- DFHippie 6y ago
  > I assume you're referring to the neocons who lied us into the war in Iraq (and keep us there to this day), the Wall Street bankers & executives who created the 2008... Really? Why reach back, in the case of neocons, to the early aughts? We need somebody that many people trusted who abused that trust, or someone attacking the trustworthiness of trustworthy people. I'm pretty sure you can find examples just in the last year. These are probably the ones the OP had in mind.
- aww_dang 6y ago
  This is what I've found incredibly healthy and liberating about less developed countries. Nobody believes politicians or assumes that government has their best interests in mind. That level of trust appears as a toxic mythology from my perspective. Instead they look for their own solutions.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
    So your assessment of the benefits of several hundred years of continuous political culture, along with a semi-continuous chain of protest movements, in "developed" countries is ... "meh" ?? Cynicism at this level does nothing but ensure that your worst take on government is what we actually get.
    - mikem170 6y ago
      I thought that the parent made an interesting observation. It's not cynicism, it a simple fact, backed up by history, of what happens when nobody trusts their government, when a the government of a people deviate too much from the interests of those people and making their lives more difficult instead of less, when all of that goes too far. This can lead to reform. It can also lead to instability. It doesn't matter whether a country is "developed" or not. Developed countries can still have corrupt governments that are not responsive to their people, civil wars, etc. It can happen quick, or take a long time. The stakes are high. Can enough of us agree on how to fix our problems? I don't know. I think that removing corporate and union money from politics would be a good first step, which is what most other countries already have done. Beyond that I wonder if we've grown our federal government too far past it's design specifications, expecting whoever is president this year to fix all our problems, leaving the other 49% of people very upset.
    - aww_dang 6y ago
      Perhaps it would help if I elaborated. I feel that you're filling in the blanks with some of your own projections. The locals here openly accept money for voting. Politicians and bureaucrats are widely regarded as liars and cheats. The government's authority is checked by continuous protests. Government officials don't want to rock the boat or create further instability. Similarly, the people have very little interest in politics. There's not constant bickering or hyperbolic demonization. Political fights don't permeate every sphere of life. Everyone mostly stays in their own lane. Yes, corruption is a problem here. Corruption is also a problem in the US. However the barrier to entry is higher. K street lobbyists don't come cheaply. Yes, the government is ineffective. The question is, do the people want it to be effective? Even the private sphere is similarly ineffective. That's just a cultural norm, separate from the relationship to government.
- spamizbad 6y ago
  You're being downvoted, but you hit the nail on the head. I feel like for people of my vintage (born in the early 80s) the whole war on terror was extremely caustic to my generational cohort. It was a weird environment where every trusted institution in society lined-up in support of both wars, and then actively worked to sideline any debate and discussion. The Dixie Chicks got infamously cancelled for saying something completely milquetoast against the Bush and the war. And just as we thought we were turning a corner on the War on Terror the financial crash of 2008 hit. Here, it was another highly regarded institution: finance. Young people might not remember this, but finance used to be the industry you would track into if you were a high achieving member of the intelligentsia. The industry was viewed as being staffed to the gills with the best-and-brightest and was afforded anodyne coverage from the establishment media. So naturally, when they imploded the country and then went on TV and blamed it on losers with mortgages[1], and proceeded to face zero real consequences because the justice system never bothered putting laws in place to protect regular people and felt such actions would "punish people for taking risks" (which as an aside: if you are just externalizing risk to 3rd parties you aren't actually "encouraging people to take risks") It's a trope, but social trust has been eroded because people feel like there's basically "meritocratic" caste system in this country: if you go to the right school, get into the right industry, and make enough money you are granted a measure of impunity when you externalize harm that you quite frankly shouldn't have. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp-Jw-5Kx8k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp-Jw-5Kx8k
  - mcguire 6y ago
    "Young people might not remember this, but finance used to be the industry you would track into if you were a high achieving member of the intelligentsia. The industry was viewed as being staffed to the gills with the best-and-brightest and was afforded anodyne coverage from the establishment media." Speaking as someone who was born before the 80s, my perception is that you have misread this situation. The rise of finance was a consequence of the "greed is good" 80s, which meant that disproportionate rewards went to financial industries, which was both a cause and a consequence of the collapse of every other career open to the intelligentsia. You see a similar situation on a smaller scale in the rise of Silicon Valley's start up culture, where that is seen as the most valid or only career choice in spite of asymptotically levelling benefits. The demonstration that "the best and brightest" operating open loop without regulation leads to spectacular busts is left as an exercise to the reader.

AndrewBissell 6y ago

> I've been extremely concerned with the efforts of sub-groups in our societies attacking the foundations of trust. I assume you're referring to the neocons who lied us into the war in Iraq (and keep us there to this day), the Wall Street bankers & executives who created the 2008 financial crisis and the politicians who bailed them out at the people's expense, the military/intelligence and tech industry figures who set up a vast domestic mass spying infrastructure and then hounded the people who leaked it into hiding or prison, and the media apparatus which has run cover for all these sorts of things, right? To me it often looks like a lot of what is described as "attacking trust" is actually just pointing out that it's already been worn down to a nub. We wouldn't have to deal with the emperor being naked if those darn troublemakers would just stop pointing out he's not wearing any clothes.

jrexilius 6y ago
No, actually I'm referring to groups on the left _and_ right. While popularizing the attacking of shared society and our systems foundations did start with the counter-culture left in the 60s, it has certainly become a bipartisan effort in recent decades.
- AndrewBissell 6y ago
  All the things I mentioned were entirely bipartisan affairs. In fact, we just witnessed the president who initiated the Iraq War feted and lauded by the press for his appearance at the inauguration of a new president from the "opposing" party who enthusiastically endorsed that war as a Senator. The counterculture left is a very broad category, with some legitimate and organic elements mixed up with some very confused, self-indulgent, or aimlessly subversive ones. But it didn't fire the first shots in the attack on trust, not by a long shot.
- klyrs 6y ago
  Not sure about your timeline; the 60s were predated by the McCarthy era.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  It would be a lot harder to attack them if they didn't provide such a basis for it. There was a time when journalists at least attempted to be independent: https://conversationswithslava.substack.com/p/coming-soon https://conversationswithslava.substack.com/p/coming-soon Glenn Greenwald: https://reason.com/2021/01/23/journalists-are-authoritarians/ https://reason.com/2021/01/23/journalists-are-authoritarians... > Did you vote for Donald Trump in the last election? > I didn't vote. It's ironic: That's the one old journalism trope that I agree with, which is that if you vote, you psychologically become too connected to a politician. I prefer to just keep my distance. They're a dying breed. And it was never the case that journalists were 100% objective and unbiased. That's impossible. But there was a point in time when they at least made the attempt. Avoided the appearance of impropriety. If you want people to trust you, try being trustworthy.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
    Glenn Greenwald's personal issues with (1) what he considers the appropriate relationship between journalism and "objectivity" and (2) his ability to maintain that relationship if he votes are not my problem. There are dozens/hundreds/thousands of journalists around the world who are perfectly capable of reporting in a way that is useful, insightful, factual, while still voting in elections. I don't want journalists that I read to avoid the appearance of impropriety, I want them to tell me about the world in ways that I can't find out for myself. And I want them to vote. I'm actually generally disgusted by meeting journalists who claim to not have opinions about the things they report on. I would hope that their opinions would be complex, because when you know enough about most things in the world, you realize that most things are pretty complicated and there generally aren't simple answers. But this BS of "I just try to report on what I find out, I don't really have an opinion" is, for me, a shorthand for "I'm too afraid of drawing conclusions about anything, which means I can't help my readers to do that either".
lainga 6y ago
> I assume you're referring to the neocons who ... Could you expand upon why? You mentioned your own perceptions on "attacking trust", but I didn't find much of that (or any assignment of blame to anyone) expressed in the parent comment.
- AndrewBissell 6y ago
  The parent mentions "the efforts of sub-groups in our societies attacking the foundations of trust" so it seems pretty clear to me there's an assignment of blame to someone there. There's a bit of sarcasm in my reply in that, usually, when I see people doing that in regards to this topic, they're not referring to the sort ruinous, trust-eviscerating projects I cited, but rather to things like "misinformation" or "divisive rhetoric" which, when properly viewed in context, are more symptoms than causes.
rayiner 6y ago
Spying is something nearly every single person I know can get behind, on the left or right. I’ve never seen it bleed into real life lack of trust. Everything else on the other hand: https://news.yahoo.com/ex-gop-pollster-frank-luntz-172755768.html https://news.yahoo.com/ex-gop-pollster-frank-luntz-172755768... > “Bret, I couldn't control them. They just started yelling at each other, and it would take me two minutes to say to them, 'stop' - to put my hand up to the camera like I did right there for them to get control of themselves," Luntz said
- AndrewBissell 6y ago
  Heh, thanks for the link, there's a certain dark enjoyment in seeing Luntz reap what he has sown.
DFHippie 6y ago
> I assume you're referring to the neocons who lied us into the war in Iraq (and keep us there to this day), the Wall Street bankers & executives who created the 2008... Really? Why reach back, in the case of neocons, to the early aughts? We need somebody that many people trusted who abused that trust, or someone attacking the trustworthiness of trustworthy people. I'm pretty sure you can find examples just in the last year. These are probably the ones the OP had in mind.
aww_dang 6y ago
This is what I've found incredibly healthy and liberating about less developed countries. Nobody believes politicians or assumes that government has their best interests in mind. That level of trust appears as a toxic mythology from my perspective. Instead they look for their own solutions.
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
  So your assessment of the benefits of several hundred years of continuous political culture, along with a semi-continuous chain of protest movements, in "developed" countries is ... "meh" ?? Cynicism at this level does nothing but ensure that your worst take on government is what we actually get.
  - mikem170 6y ago
    I thought that the parent made an interesting observation. It's not cynicism, it a simple fact, backed up by history, of what happens when nobody trusts their government, when a the government of a people deviate too much from the interests of those people and making their lives more difficult instead of less, when all of that goes too far. This can lead to reform. It can also lead to instability. It doesn't matter whether a country is "developed" or not. Developed countries can still have corrupt governments that are not responsive to their people, civil wars, etc. It can happen quick, or take a long time. The stakes are high. Can enough of us agree on how to fix our problems? I don't know. I think that removing corporate and union money from politics would be a good first step, which is what most other countries already have done. Beyond that I wonder if we've grown our federal government too far past it's design specifications, expecting whoever is president this year to fix all our problems, leaving the other 49% of people very upset.
  - aww_dang 6y ago
    Perhaps it would help if I elaborated. I feel that you're filling in the blanks with some of your own projections. The locals here openly accept money for voting. Politicians and bureaucrats are widely regarded as liars and cheats. The government's authority is checked by continuous protests. Government officials don't want to rock the boat or create further instability. Similarly, the people have very little interest in politics. There's not constant bickering or hyperbolic demonization. Political fights don't permeate every sphere of life. Everyone mostly stays in their own lane. Yes, corruption is a problem here. Corruption is also a problem in the US. However the barrier to entry is higher. K street lobbyists don't come cheaply. Yes, the government is ineffective. The question is, do the people want it to be effective? Even the private sphere is similarly ineffective. That's just a cultural norm, separate from the relationship to government.
spamizbad 6y ago
You're being downvoted, but you hit the nail on the head. I feel like for people of my vintage (born in the early 80s) the whole war on terror was extremely caustic to my generational cohort. It was a weird environment where every trusted institution in society lined-up in support of both wars, and then actively worked to sideline any debate and discussion. The Dixie Chicks got infamously cancelled for saying something completely milquetoast against the Bush and the war. And just as we thought we were turning a corner on the War on Terror the financial crash of 2008 hit. Here, it was another highly regarded institution: finance. Young people might not remember this, but finance used to be the industry you would track into if you were a high achieving member of the intelligentsia. The industry was viewed as being staffed to the gills with the best-and-brightest and was afforded anodyne coverage from the establishment media. So naturally, when they imploded the country and then went on TV and blamed it on losers with mortgages[1], and proceeded to face zero real consequences because the justice system never bothered putting laws in place to protect regular people and felt such actions would "punish people for taking risks" (which as an aside: if you are just externalizing risk to 3rd parties you aren't actually "encouraging people to take risks") It's a trope, but social trust has been eroded because people feel like there's basically "meritocratic" caste system in this country: if you go to the right school, get into the right industry, and make enough money you are granted a measure of impunity when you externalize harm that you quite frankly shouldn't have. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp-Jw-5Kx8k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp-Jw-5Kx8k
- mcguire 6y ago
  "Young people might not remember this, but finance used to be the industry you would track into if you were a high achieving member of the intelligentsia. The industry was viewed as being staffed to the gills with the best-and-brightest and was afforded anodyne coverage from the establishment media." Speaking as someone who was born before the 80s, my perception is that you have misread this situation. The rise of finance was a consequence of the "greed is good" 80s, which meant that disproportionate rewards went to financial industries, which was both a cause and a consequence of the collapse of every other career open to the intelligentsia. You see a similar situation on a smaller scale in the rise of Silicon Valley's start up culture, where that is seen as the most valid or only career choice in spite of asymptotically levelling benefits. The demonstration that "the best and brightest" operating open loop without regulation leads to spectacular busts is left as an exercise to the reader.