There are four institutions in America we entrust to safeguard truth. Before we can fix America’s problems, these institutions must earn back the faith they’ve squandered.
“No one should blame the individuals trapped inside these institutions.”
I agree with almost everything you said here. No doubt our institutions have failed us with a disregard for the truth. But, these institutions only function because of the combined effort of individuals who make them up. At what point do we hold all individuals to the truth no matter what one’s role is in said institution?
It was evident during Covid, that an entire community of scientifically trained medical professionals were capable of individually choosing to “do what they were told”, “roll over” or fall in line” while the nation fell into chaos. Why were they in denial of their medical training or their God-given sensibilities? Why was there no mutiny? The disease didn’t scare me. Instead, I was terrified by all of these individual minds adhering to questionable treatments and rules. Everyday we are learning more about how mismanaged this was. It is difficult to get my trust back and now I’m questioning almost every facet of my medical care.
To begin to inspire public confidence, individuals need have the courage to speak up for the truth. Or perhaps, just the courage to support those who try to. This goes for all of the institutions you refer to in your piece. In my opinion, it is only the collective honest individual souls who exist in these institutions who can redeem them.
I completely agree with you. Although I try to be compassionate towards the people working in broken institutions. I recognize not everyone has the courage to run into buzzsaws, or is able to make the sacrifices necessary to take the risk. At the same time, that's absolutely no excuse for becoming a functionary carrying out wicked plans, like Hannah Arendt's banality of evil.
I agree wholeheartedly, but I would add school boards to the list; we’ve lost trust in THEM, too.
A good place to start would be with Tony Fauci and Francis Collins admitting, on behalf of the NIH, that they spent the pandemic lying and misleading and encouraging scientific misconduct. And then Fauci should turn himself in and spend the rest of his natural life in solitary confinement.
I depend on NIH to fund my research. And I completely understand why regular people don’t trust it anymore.
The pandemic was a real turning point for a lot of people in exposing the result-driven dishonesty in institutions--telling people thinks the fact have established they absolutely knew wasn't true in order to engineer society to do "good." I actually think historians looking back are going to attribute it to doing a lot of damage to the American system and leading to very bad results.
100%. I think that a big part of what got Trump elected was widespread resentment against the “elites” and “experts”, who told and propagated lies about the virus and the vaccines, and selectively reported on incidents of white-on-black racism and violence. The election of Trump was more a rejection of The Left, which has taken over the Democratic Party. AND a loss of trust in the institutions that have been seized by The Left: the legacy media, the federal workforce, the universities, and the school boards.
“No one should blame the individuals trapped inside these institutions.”
I agree with almost everything you said here. No doubt our institutions have failed us with a disregard for the truth. But, these institutions only function because of the combined effort of individuals who make them up. At what point do we hold all individuals to the truth no matter what one’s role is in said institution?
It was evident during Covid, that an entire community of scientifically trained medical professionals were capable of individually choosing to “do what they were told”, “roll over” or fall in line” while the nation fell into chaos. Why were they in denial of their medical training or their God-given sensibilities? Why was there no mutiny? The disease didn’t scare me. Instead, I was terrified by all of these individual minds adhering to questionable treatments and rules. Everyday we are learning more about how mismanaged this was. It is difficult to get my trust back and now I’m questioning almost every facet of my medical care.
To begin to inspire public confidence, individuals need have the courage to speak up for the truth. Or perhaps, just the courage to support those who try to. This goes for all of the institutions you refer to in your piece. In my opinion, it is only the collective honest individual souls who exist in these institutions who can redeem them.
I completely agree with you. Although I try to be compassionate towards the people working in broken institutions. I recognize not everyone has the courage to run into buzzsaws, or is able to make the sacrifices necessary to take the risk. At the same time, that's absolutely no excuse for becoming a functionary carrying out wicked plans, like Hannah Arendt's banality of evil.
I agree wholeheartedly, but I would add school boards to the list; we’ve lost trust in THEM, too.
A good place to start would be with Tony Fauci and Francis Collins admitting, on behalf of the NIH, that they spent the pandemic lying and misleading and encouraging scientific misconduct. And then Fauci should turn himself in and spend the rest of his natural life in solitary confinement.
I depend on NIH to fund my research. And I completely understand why regular people don’t trust it anymore.
The pandemic was a real turning point for a lot of people in exposing the result-driven dishonesty in institutions--telling people thinks the fact have established they absolutely knew wasn't true in order to engineer society to do "good." I actually think historians looking back are going to attribute it to doing a lot of damage to the American system and leading to very bad results.
100%. I think that a big part of what got Trump elected was widespread resentment against the “elites” and “experts”, who told and propagated lies about the virus and the vaccines, and selectively reported on incidents of white-on-black racism and violence. The election of Trump was more a rejection of The Left, which has taken over the Democratic Party. AND a loss of trust in the institutions that have been seized by The Left: the legacy media, the federal workforce, the universities, and the school boards.
Aaron Renn has a really good recent piece on the logic of dealing with broken institutions and the possible responses. See here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/aaronrenn/p/ditching-institutions?r=5488or&utm_medium=ios
Good article and thanks for sharing it. I'm actually a big fan of Aaron, and got to meet him at an event earlier this year.