By: S. Rowan Wolf
This work is licensed under a "fair use" Creative Commons license.
What is trust to you? What is it based on? For me, there are different levels of trust. Everyday trust that the folks around you will follow normal rules of behavior. Trust that when someone tells me something that it is accurate and true. Then there are the deeper levels of trust. Trust that what you see is real. Trust that those who are supposed to have your best interests at heart do. We place different levels of trust in different aspects of our lives - from the trust of intimates to the trust in social institutions. Deep levels of trust, for me, are built through experience. When trust is shaken or broken, rebuilding that is difficult. I think my experience is common, and I believe that it applies to nations as well as to individuals. I believe that many problems may be being aggravated by a loss of trust.
I look at the situation between Israel and Palestine for example. Once again, the two nations are attempting a peaceful resolution to generations of conflict and death. There is not a lot of trust to go around between Israel and Palestine. It will be a difficult thing to build. Even a child could figure out that trust will be difficult. So why, in the midst of supposedly trying to build peace is Israel covertly funding settler outposts in the West Bank? And not just one or two outposts, but 105 of them?
This process is not just a violation of Israel's own laws, and international agreements.
The Israeli government is funding and building Jewish settlement outposts across the West Bank in violation of its own laws and international mandates, according to a government-sanctioned report scheduled to be released Wednesday.""... "the violation of the law has become institutional and institutionalized" in some government agencies, according to the newspaper account. "There is blatant violation of the law by certain state authorities, public authorities, regional councils in [the West Bank] and the settlers." Washington Post, 3/09/05
In other words, the violation of the law has become the standard procedure. Is it any surprise then that Palestinians fear Israeli land grabs? Particularly when the Israeli government flatly lies it is doing just that? How do you build trust in such a situation? The simple answer? You don't.
Israel, unfortunately, is not alone in lies and deceptions. The United States is certainly leading the way. I heard at least 100 times leading up to the US invasion of Iraq "How can you believe someone who has lied and concealed so many times?" in reference to disbelieving Hussein's claims he did not have weapons of mass destruction. So how can the people of the United States or the world believe anything that the U.S. says or does, when truth is an expendable commodity in the quest for "Christian" empire?
Pentagon Sued for Records on Propaganda, Psy-Ops,and "Perception Management" Targeting U.S. Civilians
These are just a few examples, there is site after site containing hundreds of lies that have been told by the current regime.
After a point, some people stop trusting. After a certain amount of trust violation, one distrusts first. I certainly find myself in that situation. My trust in the government of the United States has never been particularly high. There have been too many concealed activities, too many "spun" situations, too much corruption, for me to not take everything with a grain of salt. However, never in my relatively short life have I gotten to the point where I distrusted absolutely everything that an administration says or does.
If someone, some organization, or some government consistently betrays trust, regaining it takes more than denial, apology, or sincerity. It demands a visible change of action. One has to prove they are trust worthy. That requires time, but it also sometimes requires extraordinary measures on the part of the one who broke the trust. One must see a demonstrable and substantive change to even give the trust breaker a chance. And the trust breaker must not slip up. In other words, in the course of building trust there must not be another breach of trust. That breach does not just become one more little thing, it magnifies the pattern of trust violation.
This is the situation that Israel is in, and it is the situation that the U.S. is in both domestically and internationally. What is particularly alarming is the hubris with which this happens. There seems to be a total disconnect. With the Bush administration we have all the arguments that the President does not support torture and there is no policy on torture. Meanwhile, every document and action shows that is obviously a lie - including ongoing official support for the CIA's use of torture and "extraordinary rendition" to send "suspects" where they can be "legally" tortured. It almost seems as if each action taken by the United States is calculated to offend and affront - to shove in the world's face that "we got big guns" and your input is worthless. We will not work cooperatively with others, and we will change the world to fit our "vision." Certainly that is the signal that is being sent with the nomination of Bolton to the UN, and the talk about getting rid of Annan and El Baradei.
Apparently those in power in the United States do not feel it is worth the effort to build trust, or to work cooperatively with others. Likewise, Israel apparently feels there are no consequences to its covert action in contraversion of its own laws. In both cases, some "greater objective" supersedes both the rule of law and the lives of the population.
I believe that many in the U.S. believe we live under a rule of law, when it is increasingly clear that we are living under the rule of the thug. We see demonstrated before our eyes a scenario where law, even basic morality, is cast aside in favor of some publicly unspecified "greater goal." We see that loyalty is rewarded over results, and those who are "loyal" are not only protected from the consequences of their actions, but given more power or promotions. Meanwhile, there is a total disregard of the costs to people, nations, or the Constitution under which we live.
What is frightening is that many in the U.S. are apparently not able to see through the thin veil of deceit. Perhaps at base is the horror of losing trust in the basic premises under which we live our lives. The trust that those in power will act in the best interests of the people and the country. The trust that our laws are sound and that basic principles will not be violated. These are the "givens" that many people operate with. Losing the security of those "givens" creates major disruption in personal and collective lives. It becomes easier to believe the "comfortable lie."
This is what happened to much of the German population under Hitler. It is what happened to much of the U.S. population during the "McCarthy era" and the decades of the "Red Scare." Surely, the state will only use its power for eliminating/controlling the "bad guys." Good citizens have nothing to hide, and are automatically excluded from the violation of law and decency. On the other hand, the population has everything to fear from the "enemy." and the only safety lies in the wise and vigilant decisions of our "leaders."
I believe that the United States and the world are in the throes of a crisis of trust. People are responding to that crisis in three basic ways - ignore it, deny it, expose it. Those who choose to ignore what's going on make no effort to watch what is happening in the world. They ignore the situation in Iraq, the rising threat of World War III, the collapse of the environment, and the elimination of civil liberties. They tend to mouth whatever the justifications are that they hear in the sides of their lives. Then there are the deniers. These are the ones - who for whatever reason - have embraced the lies. They invest tremendous energy in supporting the actions and policies of those in power. There are no facts that are valid exposures of what is going on. Every voice that tries to expose what is going on is part of some "political agenda" or "conspiracy theory" and ultimately a threat to the United States. They generally believe that such voices should be silenced so that they don't "contaminate" others. Then you have those who attempt to speak out. Voices in the wilderness that are targeted by those in power, supported by the deniers, and with the tacit complicity of those who choose to ignore what is going on.
Perhaps this analysis is overly simplistic, but I have a gut sense that all are responding to the same crisis of trust. The mechanisms of response are mirrored in many aspects of society. The drive among various parts of the society to "escape reality." These groups run from the "Raves" to the partiers, to those who become ensnared by the fabricated reality of "reality TV." If that doesn't work, you can always take anti-depressant or anti-anxiety medication. If you want to totally change your focus then get some Viagra or Cialis or some other "sexual performance enhancer" that will only cause you a problem if your erection lasts for more than four hours. (Notice all of these "enhancement" drugs are aimed at men - women are once more the passive receptacles of male sexual interest. Of course in the commercials the women are all depicted smiling contentedly).
I am not sure that a crisis of trust can endure indefinitely - at least not on the broader level. I could be wrong in that, but it seems that there would be an ongoing deterioration as the waves of cause and effect lap outward. Could we be (largely) passively led to our destruction? I fear that might be possible. The image comes to mind of Temple Grandin - the woman who is credited with making slaughter house more humane. Her solution to calm the fears of the cattle, was to curve the chutes through which the cattle pass on their way to death. The curve must be just right, so they can always see a little way ahead, but are virtually blind behind. The Bush administration spin machine seems to have taken that to heart. Herd the folks along the chute waving security, democracy, and prosperity in front of them and rewriting history behind them. But the "prompters" are there on the sides of the chutes - sometimes distracting but always moving the crowd along - to our ultimate destruction