So whom can you trust?
Without trust, a healthy relationship is not possible, and if such a relationship exists, then it is a highly dysfunctional one.
A trustworthy individual is usually one who is honest, moral or ethical, dependable, competent, and friendly — and a good conversationalist is an added plus.
It has generally been true of many politicians that they say one thing to local constituencies and then don't fulfill their promises when they get into higher office. Essentially, they sometimes lie, deceive, or make false promises to suit the occasion and audience.
When Donald Trump became president, he shocked establishment left, which soon became addicted to his destruction by any means. Leftists started tallying what they considered Trump's lies and misinformation, and the total number exceeded 30,000 by the time he left office.
Since then, Joe Biden has also been caught in lies about COVID, Afghanistan, the Kyle Rittenhouse case, and other matters. His misstatements could be attributed to his ignorance and onsetting dementia, and the fact that he doesn't seem to be in charge of the presidency but lets others run the government, to be charitable.
The establishment media are most egregious in their lying and deceptions. The press is no longer doing much traditional objective fact-based journalism, but primarily opinion pieces, if not outright inventions, to fit a preconceived agenda that incorporates accusations of racism, misogyny, homophobia, white supremacy, and vigilantism. All of these accusations then lead to attempts to blacklist individuals or cancel them in an effort to censor opposing views not in line with Marxist-like overtones of the press itself and its politically correct viewpoints.
The media have become so reckless and brazen that they don't seem to fear defamation lawsuits. Kyle Rittenhouse, a private citizen, was ruthlessly accused of being a racist, a white supremacist, and a murderous vigilante before all the evidence was presented in his trial. The court evidence proved otherwise, and his claim of self-defense was vindicated. Whether Kyle will ever recover his good reputation is debatable, but I would strongly encourage him to sue for defamation, out of which he could make a small fortune with an excellent lawyer's help.
The media are getting reckless because they seem to feel free to defame public figures and think they can get away with the same nefarious tactics on private citizens, too, without any fact-checking ahead of time. In October 2021, CNN fell to 487,000 in viewership and will soon be on the verge of bankruptcy. A big successful defamation suit could be the final nail in the network's coffin as it rapidly goes out of business with a ruined reputation for untrue reporting.
We have broadly covered lying politicians and the lying media so far, but lying or misrepresentation on social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and Gab is even more rampant, where conspiracy theories abound and a boatload of false information is published. Very few politicians and rare media outlets have a good reputation for integrity, but those who do are sources for relatively truthful information. Finding truthful sources of information on social media is difficult for the average human, who is in instant consumption mode without any personal fact-checking or going down the rabbit hole to check original sources of the published information.
The medical profession is fast losing trust with the public with Dr. Anthony Fauci claiming that attacks on him are attacks on science. This is a preposterous claim, because many of his COVID recommendations have no scientific proof or validity. The recommendations are purely the support of fear-based, impulsive, factless, authoritarian, political mandates that do more harm than good to the economy and the long-term health of the population, especially young children, who rarely die and would be better off with natural immunity to COVID. Fauci has never even mentioned the advantages of natural immunity, which are much safer and long-lived after a natural recovery from a COVID infection, which applies to more than 99% of the population. The vast majority do not die from a COVID infection but develop great natural immunity even to other COVID variants.
The reputation of doctors is on the decline since many are doing a poor job of preventing and curing health problems by simply prescribing a pill for almost any illness they think a patient is experiencing. Just Googling research shows that the average adult takes four or more prescription drugs each day, and a whopping 39% of seniors take five or more because often more pills are prescribed for bad pill side-effects.
Just watch a handful of medication TV ads for the artificial pill chemicals. The side-effects publicly mentioned can be so shocking that it should instill fear in any healthy individual. I was shocked when one of the side-effects mentioned was a bodily complication followed by death! Count over-the-counter pill consumption, and the total pill count more than doubles. That too many Americans are drowning in artificial pills is becoming more evident with each passing year thanks to greedy Big Pharma, which loves addictive pills because they represent permanent customers.
Need I mention the legal drug opioid crisis caused by incompetent doctors and greedy Big Pharma? Add to this the use of addictive illegal drugs, and you have a cascading drug problem, which is not showing any signs of getting better.
So which public figures can be trusted? I trust humans whom I know well and who in my opinion have integrity or are honest and moral or ethical. I trust my wife and grown children the most, but they are not public figures. Check out some of these public humans yourself, because they are, next to your family, in my opinion, those who can be trusted: Ben Shapiro, Mark Levin, Gad Saad, Patrick Bet David, Thomas Sowell, and Sabine Hossenfelder (a scientist with a lot of common sense and who even covers topics of interest to the average human). The rest I respect, but I don't know them well enough to trust them, even though they may be trustworthy. They are Jordan Peterson, David Rubin, John Stossel, Dennis Prager, and Condoleezza Rice. The list of public humans whose personalities I like are too numerous to list.
So which public figures do you trust or respect? Make your own list, and then support the trustworthy with your dollars so they can flourish!
Image: U.S. National Archives, no known restrictions.
To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.