OPINION:
Recent surveys show that Americans have very little faith in government.
The Pew Research Center’s trust tracker poll, conducted since 1958, found that only 2% of Americans trust the government “just about always” to do what is right. Another 15% said they trust it “most of the time.”
I wonder where those trusting folks are getting their news.
The 17% figure is a deep drop from the combined trust rate of 73% in 1958, back when Ike was president and things were relatively normal.
That was before the government began wasting money by the trillions, telling sweet lies about the benefits of welfare, enforcing false pronouns, welcoming millions of illegal aliens and coordinating with a corrupt media to censor unwanted views.
The Trump administration is working hard to restore trust via transparency, particularly at the FBI, the Justice Department and the federal health agencies, but it is going to take a lot more.
A big decline in trust occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic emergency, when authorities gaslit us over and over and told us not to believe our lying eyes.
So, it was not surprising that the government’s — and the media’s — alarm over recent measles outbreaks was met with skepticism.
In Pennsylvania, officials initially reported that two people died from measles. On Aug. 25, Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, seized on the fact that neither person had been vaccinated. He launched into an attack on Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic, effectively blaming him for the deaths.
“There’s real-life consequences to spreading misinformation,” Mr. Shapiro said.
Well, yes, but one of the victims was a newborn infant who had a ruptured spleen that the coroner ruled was not a result of measles. The other person’s cause of death is unknown, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention removed both as measles-related deaths from its website.
Mr. Kennedy shot back that Mr. Shapiro’s staff may have “fabricated” the victims and accused the governor of engaging in a “replay of the Democrats’ COVID playbook.”
Both deaths occurred in Lancaster County, prompting at least one blogger to write, “Well, it looks like they’re coming after the Amish now.
“The community of ‘plain people’ largely avoids vaccinations, although it is not a tenet of their faith. The MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccination rate is 25% among the Amish, compared with around 90% of Lancaster County as a whole.”
In an editorial lamenting the spat between Mr. Shapiro and Mr. Kennedy, The Washington Post observed, “It’s unclear why federal officials should be trying to adjudicate the immediate cause of these deaths.”
Well, perhaps it is partly because of all the gaslighting during the pandemic emergency.
Trust in government was severely tested under the Biden administration, which lied about the open border and ginned up two absurd impeachments. Nobody ever paid a price for any of this.
Former COVID-19 czar Anthony Fauci, who authorized taxpayer funding to the communist Chinese virology lab in Wuhan and pushed the wet market bat theory of the pandemic’s origin, lied to Congress under oath. He still faces no accountability.
Someday, I would like to see Dr. Fauci emerge from his bat cave and drive off in his Batmobile, waving his autopen pardon before being pulled over and arrested.
A new Gallup institutional confidence poll found that 89% of U.S. adults said government corruption is widespread, part of a downward trend in trust since 1979.
Minnesota is awash in billions of dollars of fraud through its welfare programs, mostly in the Somali community. Congress is engaged in nonstop insider trading. Half of the members are millionaires, and some have eight-figure fortunes. Most came in already well off, but many got very rich while in office.
The Trump family is making billions of dollars in cryptocurrency. It is legal, but it may give off bad vibes to the working stiffs who pay taxes and whom the Republicans need to turn out to vote in November.
Unlike his predecessors, however, Mr. Trump does not accept a public salary, and the much-needed White House ballroom is financed without taxpayer money.
Americans have less trust than ever before in our government. This is actually good, to a point. A free people should never conflate government with God. Still, nonstop cynicism is corrosive.
It might be worse in Canada, where the government-owned Canadian Broadcasting Corp. told affiliates not to use the word “terrorist” when recounting the 9/11 attacks. That was reversed after an outcry.
Still, the suggested wording spoke volumes about “1984”-style revisionism: “The hijackings led to passenger jet crashes.” Led to?
We need to restore trust in government by shining a light in the darkness and keeping public officials accountable. The first order of business is to shore up election integrity with the SAVE America Act and keep the socialist-Islamist Democrats, who excel in gaslighting, from taking Congress.
• Robert Knight is a columnist for The Washington Times. His website is roberthknight.com.
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