I had to answer some questions about what I what I thought about the presidential election and after I finished I realized that I was depressed in a way in the aftermath of the election. Then RSL and I went to a movie last night. On the way, she told me that she had to let a rant go and I shouldn't say anything to interrupt her.
Her main point was that she could not trust anything representatives of the incoming government say and that meant she could not watch the nightly news and would have to read various publications to find out the truth. While there has always been a truth to that condition, it is especially important since we have a President elect that sees lying as a tool of manipulation to get what he wants. And we have a GOP Congress that has used words to camouflage their real intent for 20 years or so. So you cannot trust the GOP's words, you have to follow their actions which makes watching the TV news worthless.
So why is it important for people to able to trust their government? I think the answer to that question leads us back to civil order and the condition that people must be able to trust their government if they are to support that government. If that condition is not met, people are unnerved, in distress emotionally and there is the potential for civil disorder if a critical mass of such people form a group.
That is why words and truthfulness matter. If leader's words promote a lack of order it can communicate to other people that they will be able to get away with things that appear to be in sync with those words. No where is this more true than with the reality that people in authority (police and random white males) are murdering black males of all ages on a semi-routine basis all over this country. And I can only see racist behavior, supported by an unmeasurable but fairly widespread basis of fellow white people, as the root cause of this rampage. Nothing Donald Trump or GOP Congressional legislators has said could be considered supporting punishment for white people who murder black men. And now in 2 days we have a star football player shot dead in front of a gas station at 3:45 p.m. by a businessman after a traffic incident and a lone juror wants to find the S.C. policeman who shot an unarmed Walter Scott in the back innocent.
Civil Order is at risk because words matter. Policies matter. Every citizen deserves to be treated with respect by both representatives of the government and each other. When representatives of the government use words to encourage discrimination they reduce trust in government by those who will be subject to that discrimination and those who disagree with the government.
P.S. I forgot to mention the movie we saw last night, Loving. It was about the true story of how Virginia in 1958 still had a law that they enforced forbidding interracial marriage. Many of the arguments used in support of that law are being used today by various GOP politicians and supporters to justify their positions on a number of issues. Fortunately, the Supreme Court in 1967 ruled the Virginia marriage law unconstitutional. I wonder if the Robert's Court would do so once Trump gets done with his Supreme Court appointments over the next 3 years. That is enough to make me distrust this incoming government and I am generally not a cynic.
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