Truth is the First Casualty of…Unchecked Power

Three years after the US’s catastrophic run from Afghanistan, most Americans have no clue what happened. No one has stood up and taken responsibility. Five years after the killings that triggered Black Lives Matter (BLM) most Americans do not really understand what happened and the surrounding circumstances. Even more recently, most of us do not understand with the Chinese ballon that transited American from coast to coast. Going back farther, most do not understand the Gulf of Tonkin that expanded our involvement in Vietnam. The list goes on and on. We can cite examples from corporations, politics, and regulation and taxation. Truth is hidden and trust is broken. The citizens, as shown by many polls, do not trust government functions, CEOs, and even our generals and admirals.

There is a saying that truth is the first casualty of war. The actual attribution is obscure, but it is often quoted. However, I think it is too narrowly defined. Truth is the first casualty of unchecked or unbalanced power. We see this in board rooms, bureaucracies, legislatures, and executive suites as well as war. When truth is a casualty, the death of trust is not far behind.

Clearly, we have a virtue problem with many of the people in government and society. Virtuous leaders would not lie and would stand up and take responsibility for their actions or lack of actions. I know that is harsh, but few of those in power follow the example of Johnson and Johnson during the Tylenol crisis in the early 1980s. Rather, the pattern is obfuscation, denial, and mitigation. The movie, The Kid, has two somewhat amusing scenes showing this, one with a politician and one with a baseball team owner. Obfuscation and denial murder trust.

Bad things happen when truth and trust die. If we had truth, trust, and virtue, the riots in 2020 may not have happened. The problem is even more severe when governments—the sole arbiter of “legal” force and violence—get involved. As Frank Herbert, in Chapterhouse: Dune, wrote, “All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.” Herbert’s thoughts on AI are also illuminating. Taken together, power to compel, AI, and pathological personalities seems to foreshadow even greater problems with trust and truth. Without virtue, the problems will be magnified.

The death of trust manifests itself in several ways, all of which imperil the Republic. The figure to the left is a form of Maslow’s Hierarchy Needs I adapted for modeling broken trust. It is a conceptual model and has not been validated by research and analysis. However, it has a basis in interest group theory and group dynamics, as well as observed political behavior. Let us start at the base of the pyramid.

Apathy. The political system alienates voters and they pay little or attention to any issues and do not vote.

Passive Aggressive. Voters and politicians say one thing to defuse a current situation and then do something else. This could also affect surveys when voters shade their responses or outright lie because they are concerned the information could be used against them.

Interest Group. Voters align themselves with interest groups and vote their agenda because they feel they can trust the interest group and no one else.

Policy Resistance. People, politicians, and bureaucrats ignore policies they do not support. Regulatory efforts ignore the non-compliance though loyalty to interest groups, parties, or regulatory capture. Others do not protest out of fear of retribution.

Revolt. People and groups seek to undermine the government and change it. The line between policy resistance and revolt may be blurred. Many instances of policy resistance and ignoring laws and the Constitution may flow together into implicit or explicit revolt.

Regardless of where we are on the lack of trust severity spectrum, the Republic may be imperiled if the situation is ignored and not addressed. The keys to addressing the problem are education that teaches integrated, critical thinking and unbiased, factual, trusted information.

See Defending the Republic, Part 1 or more thoughts on Policy Resistance and Revolt.

Follow up research questions:

• How valid is the trust framework?
• How can we assess the trustworthiness of information and sources?
• How can we change our education paradigm to teach integrative, critical thinking? Can the P21 program and 21^st century skills work? Will the teachers’ unions block widespread adoption?