The Deceit Dividend

The recent revelation that Joe Biden has aggressive and metastasized prostate cancer has the politisphere in a tizzy. How is it possible that a President of the United States just suddenly learn of a cancer that in all but the rarest instances takes years to reach this stage? Was his 2022 "I have cancer" utterance a Kinsley Gaffe rather than the mis-statement his handlers claimed? Were his regular trips to Delaware a way of getting treated on the down-low? Who knew what, when? Are we witnessing the exposure of yet another coverup of Biden's health issues?

We have a long record of the Democrats lying to the public about Biden’s infirmity and senescence. We have irrefutable evidence that they lied to our faces about it. We have Biden’s disastrous debate performance, we have the recently released Robert Hur interview recordings, we have a string of post-election revelations and allegations that paint a picture of contempt for the citizens of the nation, and much more. Years of deceit, deflection, cover-up, and feigned outrage set the stage for suspicion.

Even if it is true that this diagnosis was indeed out-of-the-blue, our distrust of the story as presented would be warranted. After all, the administration hid Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s surgery and hospitalization from us. Such a low-probability truth (prostate cancer doesn’t go from zero to metastasis in a couple hundred days) is, thanks to their past sins, secondary to the perception.

Stack it all up, and plop it on top of many more years of other lies to the public, of the legacy media's complicity, of dirty tricks, of a broad disdain held by the party for the public, and of the really convenient timing of this announcement and you get to...

That which libertarians have been hollering for decades:

Don't trust the government!

And, before you reflexively give your trust to Team Red, note that Team Red has its own long and sordid history of deceits and broken promises, a history that they can't even remedy today. No matter the gifts the Dems have given them via all these scandals. As I type this, Team Red can't even get together on making the absolutely necessary spending cuts the nation needs if it is to stand a chance of escaping the fiscal hole it's in, no matter decades of complaining about Team Blue's spending when Team Blue had the majority.

Then there's Trump himself, who giveth and who taketh away. I just praised him for a major and in my opinion welcome and necessary shift away from nation-building in his recent Middle East junket, but of course there has to be an antipode. In this case, it's the gift of a 747 from the Qatari government for use as Air Force One. Apologists have pretzeled themselves in attempts to explain how it's not a bribe, and sure, it is possible that it doesn't affect Trump's decision making, but, optics, man! Trump has enough showman experience to know that it's a very Bad Look. Just buy the damn thing and stop giving people reason to point fingers.

That’s just the most recent episode in the history of Trump see-saws, but reason not to put our faith in Team Red long predates the Orange One. Government has been giving us reason after reason after reason to distrust it for decades, but it took a combination of the COVID lockdowns and coverups, the collapse of Russia-gate, and the convoluted coverup of Biden's senescence to really break institutional trust in America.

Some lament this shattering, but I say "Good!" It's long past time that people stop believing that government is a Good Thing, and stop holding hope that, if only we elect the right people, institutional faith can be restored.

Ideally, we should have public institutions that are nonpartisan, that stand above the political fray, and that actually serve the public to the best of human ability. Such deals, however, lull us into thinking they can be achieved, when in reality we have two choices: Trusting a political class that will continue to lie, cheat, cover up, steal, and do whatever it can to accrue and keep power, or distrusting them and accepting that this distrust means we don't get what the ideal promises.

The institutions are in panic mode now, fearing that the public's distrust may lead to their gutting or dismantling, and they're trying to make up for their past sins. The cultural rot that produced all this distrust isn't going to be fixed with a few bandaids, however. That rot - the attitude that they are better than the rest of us and that this justifies their lying to us for our own good - is still everywhere. It bubbles up from elite academia and continues to seep into the institutions. So, they continue to think we must be managed rather than served.

I don't want people to start trusting institutions again.

Trust is what led us to this mess. We need severe skepticism*. We need "show your work, then show it again, then have others reproduce it several times, and above all else stop hiding the truth from us!" And, ultimately, we need fewer institutions telling us what to believe, who to trust, and how to think.

If endless scandals permanently break the voters' trust in government, we'll be better off.

---

*Take heed of “skepticism.” Skepticism isn’t rejection, or denial, or reflexive contrarianism. It’s “prove it” rather than “I’ll take your word for it.” It’s a higher bar to clear for those making assertions. It echoes the Sagan Standard: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence (ECREE). It reminds those in charge, those public servants who assert expertise, and those who would impose their will on others that they are paying a wholly justified price for their past transgressions.