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To Ensure Trust-worthy Government, We Need to Trust and Organize with One Another. [1]

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Date: 2023-10-10  

In the late 1950s, Johnny Carson hosted the television game show “Who do you trust?” The 2023 answer for far too many Americans appears to be, “Not institutions and certainly not my government!” That is alarming because, like it or not, our lives depend on institutions. To ensure trust-worthy government, we need to trust and organize with one another.

Sustaining trust in institutions from which we cannot opt out is a fundamental requirement of modern societies, writes M. Anthony Mills of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). He reports that distrust in government has grown markedly since Reagan's “Government is the problem, not the solution," mantra and the disruptions of the Covid-19 pandemic. The mRNA vaccines–institutional triumphs–saved millions of lives, yet were paradoxically accompanied by a decline of trust in the enterprise of science and government. The distrust is not limited to but is especially prominent among Republicans, religious Protestants, and those without a BA degree. Ideology, purposeful misinformation, and partisan identification explain a lot about how people think. However, the mistrust purveyors would not land their message if our dominant experience was that government mediates unnecessary and unjust insecurity.

“Restoring trust is therefore necessary for not only expert institutions but arguably democratic society itself,” declares Mills. I believe that the government–the quintessential institution–bears a responsibility to ensure basic human rights such as decent housing, health care, education, and food security. So, with a healthy dose of skepticism, I welcome the argument for institutional trust from the highly partisan, pro-free market AEI.

The current counterpoint to institutional trust, especially in government, is the growing sense that we are each on our own. Across countless towns and cities across the country, people are a missed paycheck away from an inability to make a rent or mortgage payment. The costs of renting or buying a home are escalating, feeding insecurity. No government institutions are stepping up to help. Who can we trust? Organized people! That is who achieved whatever government investment in affordable housing that does exist.

The Affordable Care Act notwithstanding, most of us regularly experience institutional dysfunction with our profit prioritizing non-system healthcare system. The United States lacks enough doctors, nurses, and other support professionals. As a result, we wait countless hours to get someone on the phone, just to make a needed medical appointment, only to find none is available for many months ahead. Filing claims is a frustrating nightmare. No government institutions are stepping up to help. Who can we trust? Organized people! That why we achieved Medicare, Medicaid, and laws to protect our health and safety.

For decades our political leaders told us that high-quality K-12 education and a post-secondary degree are the ticket to a successful life, the way out of poverty. For too many of us that is not working out so well. The promised benefit has not been met with sufficient government investment. Core public K-12 budgets remain inadequate and class sizes too small. As the cost of college has skyrocketed, in the absence of government support, so has crippling student debt. Worse, both political parties have resigned themselves to "You can't fix institutions, so find your own solution," and intead supported charter schools and vouchers. As a result, too many parents chose to opt out of public schools rather than fight to improve them. Our daily experience is the precarity of being on our own with no institutional support. Who can we trust? The organized people of the Civil Rights movement achieved the government investment in public education of the original Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Organized people got us the government investment in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

Dysfunctional Republicans gleefully charge that so-called Bidenomics has failed. Democrats claim credit that the rates of inflation and unemployment are down, and average pay is up. Economists, even liberal ones such as Paul Krugman, lament that Americans fail to grasp the reality of an improved economy. Informing people of "reality" falls flat. A recent article in the NY Times estimated that a single person needed a salary of $100,000 for a single person to purchase the necessities of a comfortable life in New York City. Most of us don't feel better when the price of this week’s groceries hasn't escalated as much as last month, and mortgage rates are the highest in decades. Housing and food still cost too much. No government institutions are stepping up to help. Who can we trust? Organized people! That's who fought for and got us social security, unemployment insurance, workplace safety protections, child labor prohibitions, and minimum wage regulations.

It is easy to fall into disengagement. Perception that our government is irrelevant to our daily wellbeing breeds our distrust, then disgust, and then our contempt. Another NY Times article chronicles that people are, "Too turned off to even complain."

Don’t despair. The answer to insufficient untrustworthy government isn’t leaving us all to our own devices, victims of the powerful with money. Government that is unresponsive to the needs of working people is the result of people power ceded. I refuse to live that way. To gain power, we need to turn to and trust one another. I cling to the hope that other folks will too, that we'll turn to one another, find trust in one another, and fight together for the government we need and can trust.

Arthur H. Camins retired in 2023 after thirty-three years leading science professional learning and curriculum and assessment development projects in school districts in New York City, Hudson, MA, Louisville, KY, Stevens Institute of Technology, and UC Berkeley. He taught pre-K, K, 1st and 5th grade, and elementary science, mostly in Brooklyn for seventeen years. Arthur continues to write about education and social justice.

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