When faith in government evaporates

American democracy has long depended on a basic level of trust. The Trump administration has squandered it

American democracy is built on a precarious paradox. Its founders, deeply fearful of tyranny, crafted a system that would constrain the impulses of power grabs and partisanship. Yet the same system would also depend on a certain amount of blind faith, on a reservoir of trust in government that would rise and fall over time but never sink too low.

Until now. The sun hadn’t set on Donald Trump’s first day in office before his administration began rapidly draining any semblance of credibility infused into it by the peaceful transfer of power that had just taken place. When Sean Spicer spoke from the White House podium that evening and proclaimed the inaugural crowd to have been “the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period,” he was simply cueing up the pattern of lies, distortions, and shameless half-truths that have defined his administration.

Individually, many of these moments seem harmless, but together they’ve had a destabilizing effect on the very idea of government. As the trail of falsehoods grows longer, each day Trump and his team retreat further into a defensive crouch in which no stance or statement is too outlandish to defend. The extent of the lying poisons the integrity of the whole institution, to the point where it’s now necessary to wonder whether anything the Trump administration does is genuinely in good faith.

This level of distrust doesn’t stem from public policy disagreements. Of the many traits that distinguish this White House from its predecessors, a major one remains the absence of a serious interest in policymaking, or even serious goals for the direction of the country beyond making it whiter, more isolated, and more fearful.

What we’re experiencing today is an era of distrust, not just disagreement. Disagreement is essential for a healthy democracy; distrust extinguishes it. And today, the reservoir of trust has been thoroughly emptied, drained drop-by-drop by what Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson aptly described as the Trump administration’s “spectacular accumulation of lies.”

That matters as much for the routine, everyday business of government as it does for the major crises. Consider the administration’s opposition to the proposed merger of AT&T and Time Warner. The Department of Justice, The Economist wrote recently, “worries that the combined firm could exploit [its customer base] unfairly to win new distribution customers [and] jack up the fees it charges other video distributors.” The administration is probably right to argue that “the merger would harm competition, resulting in higher bills and less innovation for millions of American consumers.” Sounds like an appropriate place for government to intervene.

But the administration’s claims, as Julia Ioffe pointed out, contradict its decidedly anti-consumer stance on most other issues, like eliminating the Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality rules. That inconsistency is made even more questionable by Trump’s childish beef with CNN. But what makes it impossible to take the administration at its word is that it has lied so relentlessly and so shamelessly so many times about issues both petty and profound that we have absolutely no idea when it’s making an honest, good-faith case.

Americans rely on the federal government, but many people don’t understand how it works or appreciate just how significantly it impacts their lives. For the most part, they don’t need to. Implicit in that lack of awareness is a basic level of trust that government will continue, quietly and competently, to perform its many functions, from compiling monthly unemployment statistics and producing weather forecasts to making scientific investments, managing retirement programs, and organizing the Census.

At a conceptual level, we may debate the role of government in American life, but few people take the time to quibble with every single thing it does. A 2015 Pew poll found, for example, that even while the country is distrustful of and frustrated with government as a whole, “in 10 of the 13 areas tested in the survey, half or more say the federal government is doing a very good or somewhat good job.”

But a growing distrust that threatens to poison even things as routine as weather forecasts and unemployment data — the business of government supposedly driven by facts, not politics — can quickly spiral into a post-truth perspective that would be right at home in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. When there’s no agreed-upon reality, the state has as much authority as the conspiracy theorist. If the choice is between RT and InfoWars, how much does the choice even matter?

A distrusted and dysfunctional government serves only those in power and those who don’t believe in the institution of government itself. That may be the goal of Trump and his party, but this isn’t just a Donald Trump problem.

It’s an H.R. McMaster problem when McMaster, the national security advisor who literally wrote a book on speaking truth to power, denies that Trump revealed classified information to the then-Russian ambassador in the Oval Office during a meeting documented only by Russian government photographers.

It’s a John Kelly problem when the White House chief of staff smears Florida Congresswoman Frederica Wilson from the White House podium, calling her an “empty barrel,” and refuses to walk back his statements even in the face of video evidence that he lied, saying he’ll “never” apologize.

It’s a Sarah Huckabee Sanders problem when the White House press secretary claims, in response to criticism of Trump’s decision to retweet a series of bigoted, Islamophobic video clips, that even if the videos aren’t real, “you’re focusing on the wrong thing [because] the threat is real.”

It’s a Steve Mnuchin problem when the Treasury secretary repeatedly asserts that his department is working on a secret, data-driven analysis showing the Republican tax bill will increase growth and reduce the federal debt even though, as Jordan Weissmann noted recently, no such analysis exists.

Every Democratic and Republican administration has had moments when someone has gotten the facts wrong, or sometimes worse. But no White House has been as blatantly, toxically, cynically untruthful to the people it purports to serve as Donald Trump’s. That’s particularly dangerous, given that Trump took office with public trust in government already at a record low.

In the event the administration successfully sues to block the AT&T-Time Warner merger, we want to believe it did so to protect consumers. But is there any reason to think that this administration’s only action that doesn’t make big business even bigger is anything other than a fulfillment of Trump’s personal vendetta against CNN?

In the event the president chooses to re-impose sanctions on Iran in violation of the 2015 nuclear agreement, we want to think it’s because the international community has clear evidence that Iran violated the accord. But have we seen any indication that Trump would overrule his national security team for any reason other than his single-minded determination to undermine Barack Obama’s legacy?

In the event of a terrorist attack, we want to believe that the federal government is pursuing all leads to find out what happened and keep the country safe. But have we been given any reason to think this administration wouldn’t spin an attack to its liking and use it to pursue its anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant agenda?

Thousands of decisions are made by the executive branch every day. Most aren’t this significant, but as a whole they’re profoundly consequential. And this administration has lied so defensively, so shamelessly, and with such self-interest and head-spinning frequency, that it’s become impossible not to question the motives behind every decision.

That doubt and distrust seeps into everything the White House does, even if the questioning is nothing more than a subtle, lurking suspicion about whether a small power company from the Interior secretary’s hometown is really the best choice to turn Puerto Rico’s power back on, or whether the State Department is really facing legitimate challenges in imposing congressionally-mandated sanctions for Russian election interference.

When the reservoir of trust has been drained, the little questions we used to shake off instead fester and grow, upsetting the shared foundation upon which our democracy rests. It makes cynics and conspiracy theorists of us all.

Blind faith, of course, is not the answer. Like a free press, public skepticism of authority and overreach keeps government in check and has long been one of this country’s most energizing and inspiring traits. And all administrations have the right to make their case and defend their decisions.

But with its refusal to concede any argument, compromise on any issue, or even consider the possibility that its performance might be anything short of exemplary and wholeheartedly patriotic, the Trump White House has corroded faith in government to a shocking degree.

It’s easy to forget that we used to be able to give public servants, even our political opponents, the benefit of the doubt.

It’s easy to forget that only the most extreme partisans used to ascribe sinister motives to everyone who questioned or critiqued them.

It’s easy to forget that a proven lie used to be met with a correction or an apology, not self-righteous defensiveness.

It’s easy to forget that faith in government didn’t used to be a luxury.

To a degree greater than many of us like to accept, the maintenance of a democratic society depends on preserving that faith. It depends on giving government the benefit of the doubt, even if we disagree with a particular policy or its implementation. Governing is far too complicated, and democracy far too precarious, for the majority of the governed to doubt every single decision.

It’s a paradoxical premise, the idea that a system built on a foundation of distrust also requires trust to function. Democracy is a delicate balance.

But in our politics today, shame is nonexistent. Common truths no longer seem to matter. Defensiveness and whataboutism have replaced honesty and accountability. And trust has been bargained away for short-term political gain. In its place, we’re left with a world in which compromise and the common good have nowhere to take root, but where conspiracy theories and corruption thrive.

In Missouri last month, Trump asserted that “there has never been a 10-month president that has accomplished what we have accomplished.” He’s right: it’s hard to imagine another president squandering so much faith so quickly.

The swamp is teeming. But America’s reservoir of trust has been drained.

This column was originally published in the Medium publication ‘Extra Newsfeed.’