Trust: What It Can And What It Can’t

     I feel certain that my Gentle Readers have all, at some time, heard the acidly funny line, “What are you going to believe? Me, or your lying eyes?” It’s not really funny, of course. Nevertheless, it alludes to a condition that has become almost as pandemic as the Kung Flu: the determination of politicians and their media handmaidens to convince us that what we see and hear isn’t really happening.

     I’m sure any reader could cite a dozen instances of such behavior off the top of his head. The current federal regime provides new examples daily, as do the many Organs of State Media that posture as clear-eyed, candid, and fearlessly independent seekers of truth. For me, it recalls to mind one of the most poignant statements I’ve ever encountered, from a man who was at one time regarded as the ultimate exemplar of economic analysis and financial understanding:

     There is no need in human life so great as that men should trust one another and should trust their government, should believe in promises, and should keep promises in order that future promises may be believed in and in order that confident cooperation may be possible. Good faith — personal, national, and international — is the first prerequisite of decent living, of the steady going on of industry, of governmental financial strength, and of international peace.

     [Benjamin M. Anderson, Economics and the Public Welfare: A Financial and Economic History of the United States, 1914–1946]

     If you’ve been reading my drivel for long, you’ve surely seen that statement before, whether here or at Liberty’s Torch V1.0. Dr. Anderson believed that trustworthy government is possible. His experience had persuaded him of that proposition. The years of the Hoover and FDR Administrations persuaded him of the contrary proposition as well.

     Myself, I’m inclined to view trustworthy government as a fleeting departure from the norm – and on this subject, no positive connotation should be attached to “the norm.” Whatever the case, people who are accustomed to trusting have a hard time withdrawing their trust. They tend to cling to it, sometimes in a future-facing way: “It will get better. Just wait for the next elections to come around. You’ll see.”

     But even the most optimistic such persons will not trust forever. There’s a breakdown-level of credulity abuse that no amount of happy-talk propaganda from the Mainstream Media can salve. When that point arrives, all bets are off.

     Just now, a lot of attention is focused on the Freedom Convoy that’s just arrived in Ottawa. There isn’t much of genuine importance in Ottawa. Strike off the Senators – the hockey team, not the parliamentarians – and you’ve rendered the city irrelevant to the typical Canadian. However, the parasite class – I can call them that; most Canadians are too polite – that infests that otherwise inoffensive burg has issued decrees about vaccinations for the Kung Flu that have angered a very large number of truckers. And that, Gentle Reader, is a class of men no sane person would deliberately anger.

     Wait. Stop. Check that. I had American truckers in mind as I wrote that last. I don’t know any Canadian truckers. I’ll have to watch for a bit. Will they extract the totalitarians from their hidey-holes, tar and feather them – warmly, I hope; it’s rather cold up there at this time of year – and go back to the business they’ve practiced for decades, no longer fettered by political nonsense? Or will they merely exercise their air brakes and air horns a bit, then go home with their ire slaked, and comply with the parasites’ ukases?

     And what about American truckers, whose livelihoods are just as threatened by political insanity as their Canadian colleagues? Can we expect anything from them, or have the Usurpers and their tin god Fauci broken them to harness?

     It’s a matter of trust. Some people trust the current regime to attend to their grievances. Others trust that the upcoming elections will compel the Usurper Regime to cease and desist. Perhaps at one time, there were grounds for such trust. But while trust can help to perpetuate the tenure of a floundering regime despite repeated “failures,” it cannot put goods on store shelves. Neither can it lower the prices of necessities nor pay the bills of a man who’s lost his job because of a mandate from Ottawa or Washington D.C.

     I could go on, but I shan’t. Matters are becoming too grave to blather about. From the machinations of the Deep State and the stunning theft of the 2020 elections has flowed more political malice and deceit than I, a notable pessimist about the behavior of politicians and governments, dreamed in my darkest nightmares. People have already suffered and died in large numbers because of it. More will do so, and no one knows how to prevent it.

     As for trusting that all will be made right after “the next elections,” I refer my readers to the circus of November 2020 and what has followed thence.