Brushing off the Gospel of Distrust, Mary Katherine Ham recited chapter and verse of this American testimony on a recent episode of The Ezra Klein Show. Ham, introduced as a fourth generation journalist with a fairly uncongenial opinion of the industry, seemed eager to have this conversation with guest host Jane Coaston, about the distrust running rampant throughout the American public, particularly on the right.
The Gospel of Distrust is a well-worn book in the Bible of American political orthodoxy. Distrust of institutions, distrust of the media, distrust of the government. Our intellectual history is peopled by figures as distrustful of something as Ayn Rand, Barry Goldwater, Abbie Hoffman, and Glenn Beck. From the Gospel of Distrust flows the “paranoid style” of American politics, as Richard Hofstader memorably phrased it:
Of course this term is pejorative, and it is meant to be; the paranoid style has a greater affinity for bad causes than good. But nothing really prevents a sound program or demand from being advocated in the paranoid style. Style has more to do with the way in which ideas are believed than with the truth or falsity of their content. [...] The paranoid style is an old and recurrent phenomenon in our public life which has been frequently linked with movements of suspicious discontent.
Ham proclaims The Gospel of Distrust in the paranoid style. The episode, titled “This Conservative Thinks American Institutions ‘Earned’ the G.O.P.’s Distrust,’ centered on the rampant collapse in Republican trust in institutions over the last decade. Donald Trump’s name is barely elicited, but his influence is a wake that runs across the flow of the discussion. Eschewing left-right distinctions, however, Ham rhapsodizes about distrust fusing together the political margins.
Ham’s brand of distrust falls under the ‘fiscal conservative’ category. At one point she gladly proclaims, “I struggle with how not to tip into cynicism. But I am largely skeptical of all government endeavors, and they have the power unlike any other institution - to violently withhold your freedom.”
She’s correct. The government does possess extraordinary powers to coerce, compel, and withhold freedoms - but skepticism of “all government endeavors” is less skepticism than ideology.
True skepticism is open to persuasion, and a handy tool is one’s personal arsenal. But the knee-jerk reaction against all government endeavors reflects the kind of hyperindividualism that denies the power of collective action - which is an unfortunate denial of American greatness.
Yes, the government’s powers have often been abused throughout American history to advance a corrupt agenda, oppress minorities, and burden the working poor. I’m currently reading Charlie Savage’s Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy - a 2007 account of the Bush-Cheney administration’s excessive secrecy and illegal policies regarding the execution of the Afghan and Iraq wars. This little trip down memory lane by no means paints a sunny picture of government officials acting as ethical, dutiful civil servants faithfully advancing the public’s interest. Rather, it is a damning indictment of individuals intent on leveraging their power and enacting a personal agenda at the expense of the rule of law.
Surely, this testimony is enough to convince anyone to suspect the motives of our elected officers. Wielding the state’s gravest authority to wage war is the ultimate expression of government abuse.
But are the institutions to blame - or the people who populate and run those institutions? Savage’s book paints men like Dick Cheney, John Yoo, and Alberto Gonzales in an unflattering light, exposing their contemptuous disregard of Constitutional demands and legal norms, finding laworly expressions to green-light torture, extraordinary rendition, and military expeditions. With great effort, these policies were kept secret from the oversight of the public, Congress and any other check on executive power.
The book is also a portrait in the work of ethical subversion. Yes, the institutional powers of the presidency were being abused by the administration in power, but within those institutions countervailing figures pushed back. Troubled by the reports he was receiving, Dr. Michael Gelles, head of the Navy’s CIS forensic psychology division and an expert on interrogations, alerted NCIS director David Brandt about conditions in Guantanamo. Together, with the Navy’s general counsel Alberto Mora, Dr. Gelles worked against the efforts of their boss, Donald Rumsfeld and President Bush, to force revisions of the new interrogation policies.
There are portraits of James Comey and John Ashcroft refusing to toe the administration line on accepting, ignoring, or covering up the illegal practices of the Bush Department of Justice.
The Gospel of Distrust settles on the darkest interpretation of events. The only lesson worth learning from Savage’s book is that devious men will take their country into war for personal reasons, and the public will go along with them.
An alternative view, equally grounded in evidence and facts however, would suggest that institutions are not monolithic entities deployed with a whim. The Federal government is comprised of 438 agencies, employing over 2 million people. Every agency’s mission is circumscribed and well-defined. The Environmental Protection Agency. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The Department of State. The Department of Defense. The FBI. The USDA. FEMA.
Each agency is an institution within itself. Each agency brings together the disparate, diverse talents of millions of civil servants expediting the complicated tasks of their mandate. The Gospel of Distrust condemns these institutions and endeavors as encroachments upon freedom, as inefficient and wasteful, as an excuse for expensive boondoggles that should be left to private industry. The Gospel of Distrust sings “Don’t Tread on Me,” insists the government got off our backs, fears regulation, insists that individuals are the only legitimate actors in social life.
What’s left out of the Gospel of Distrust, however, is the Law of Large Numbers. The insurance industry - certainly a proponent of The Gospel of Distrust (see Jill Lapore’s discussion on social security and universal healthcare in her book These Truths) - relies on the Law of Large Numbers to maintain their business. The Law states that “the more policyholders an insurance company has, the more confident they are their predictions will be true. This is because the larger the number of policyholders, the greater the probability that the actual loss will equal the expected loss.”
In other words, the more people come together to pool their risk, the more likely the adverse effects of risk will be mitigated. Even more simply put, it is more effective and more efficient for a large group of people to provide themselves with health insurance (say), than for any one individual to cover the cost of coverage themselves. By providing for the commons, every individual enjoys the benefits of insurance without having to bear the entire burden of their own personal risk.
Government operates similarly. We insure future generations universal education by pooling our resources together and extending education to everyone. Because the return on investment in education takes decades to realize (but do return significant, tangible benefits to the whole of society), it makes no sense to expect education itself to bring in its own financing. Taxes pool together the resources necessary to run and maintain a key government function that greatly enhances public life, in a way that is fair, modest, and only mildly intrusive.
Distrusting institutions simply because they are institutions is not skepticism - it is cynicism. For a fairly successful journalist, whose family tree is bolstered by generations of journalists, her distrust comes across as transgressive, impulsive, rebellious without a cause. She could lend her voice to the disaffected anti-vaxxers wailing at school board meetings about their “theft” of their “freedom,” or she could reflect on the traditions of public schooling in America that bolstered the literacy necessary for her grandparents’ vocation and mission.
Yes, the abuse of government is a fearful, tyrannical monster, and every citizen should protest injustices enacted in their name through the guise of the United States government, but deceit is not the government’s only function.
Deceit derives from the people placed in positions of power. Institutions do not run themselves. Democracies allow for citizens to select officers to helm the government. Frequently, individuals running for office dismiss the values of transparency and good government for the opportunity to realize their dreams and ambitions.
Those are the people deserving of distrust - the abusers, manipulators, demagogues, professional liars who stir the public in a frenzy to distract from their real intent.
It is the people the public lends credibility to that disgrace the commonly held property that is the United States government. If you have trouble discerning between the true public servant and mendacious charlatan, listen to their words.
From those who evangelize The Gospel of Distrust, run.