How to Live in a Lower Trust Nation

You can't even trust your friends anymore, plus thoughts on the Olympics opening ceremony controversy

Audio version of this article (AI generated)

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America is in the midst of a slow-motion shift to a much lower trust society. We see this in the decline of trust in American institutions. But it affects our personal relationships as well.

The New York Times ran a front page story on Sunday about a former friend and law school classmate of J.D. Vance who provided personal emails and texts with Vance to the Times, which wrote:

That exchange is from a series of emails between two friends, part of a close-knit group of 16 students who remained together throughout their first law school semester in the fall of 2010. As now-Senator Vance seeks the vice presidency, Nelson has shared about 90 of their emails and text messages, primarily from 2014 through 2017, with The New York Times.

As I wrote before, loyalty is the coin of the realm. Disclosing personal emails, even if from an ex-friend, to the media in order to try to harm someone is treasonous.

It’s also to be expected. In a lower trust society, we can no longer assume that even our friends won’t betray us. This is doubly true if the friend has different politics from you. And it’s triply true if you are a conservative and your friend is a liberal, because liberals are more likely to unfriend you over politics.

Joshua Treviño noted that this article has a double purpose, writing:

Let us not forget that pieces like this are also instructional. They exist to give positive permission for ideologues on the left to elevate their politics over their personal relationships. They furthermore establish the expectation that all on the left will do the same. It is explicitly meant to subordinate both family and community to the cause.

We should respond to these sorts of things in two ways:

1. We have to take stock of the new reality and simply put less trust in other people. It’s a good rule of thumb that you should not put anything in an email, text, or group chat unless you think you could handle the heat if it were published in the Times. Again, you especially can’t fully trust anyone with the opposite politics here.

2. We should not reveal the private communications of others, even those of people with opposite politics or with whom we’ve had a falling out. Just because other people like Vance’s “friend” will reveal private emails doesn’t mean we should do the same. We should hold ourselves to a higher standard.

What that standard should be for ourselves in this reality is not fully clear in every case. It certainly isn’t the old WASP gentleman’s code. As I’ve said before, people who tell you to abide by the social conventions of decades past - like the call for men to act like TV dad Ward Cleaver - are basically telling you to be a chump. That’s one reason I say tradcons are the enemy of the American man.

We have to take account of the cold reality that we no longer live in a world of gentlemen, or one that lives by the old values. So we have to set standards for ourselves that are not reliant on reciprocation. I would say that not revealing private communications except in extraordinary circumstances is one such standard we can have.

We should seek to be worthy of trust, even if society and many of the people in it are not.

We should also try to encourage those around us to do the same. Ideally, we’d find ways to build our own moral communities, whether in a church, a friend group, etc., where it’s possible to establish in-group standards that allow higher trust relationships to flourish. But doing that requires a community that delivers high value to its members, and which can effectively enforce its standards, such as by painfully expelling members who violate them. But in reality, few of us have these communities today.

Negative World Olympics

You surely saw that the opening ceremonies of the Paris Olympics included a performance similar to Leonardo’s paining of the Last Supper, except with drag queens. This caused an outpouring of offense by Christians and some others.

This is another example of the Negative World, in which official, elite culture views Christianity negatively. No other religion would have received the same treatment in this sort of official ceremony.

There’s certainly no one right way to respond to things like this. Those who complained about it, including the French conference of bishops, forced the Olympic committee to issue a non-apology apology. The mere fact of the controversy detracts from the Olympics in ways that must have displeased French President Emmanuel Macron. So the outcry had an effect, and this was not a cost-free choice for the Olympics.

But in my view, American Christians need to develop a thicker skin about things like this, which are only going to keep recurring.

Someone said that ignoring insults like this is something that only a dhimmi or an aristocrat would do. The reality is Western Christians are dhimmis now, in a certain sense. Posting on X about how offensive it is belies the reality, which is that they did it, they got away with it, and you can’t stop them from doing it again.

Angry people might say something needs to be done, but what can you do besides post on social media? I categorically reject political and social violence, and encourage others to do the same. So doing what Ayatollah Khomeini did with Salman Rushdie is not an option. What legitimate and effective actions are there?

What’s more, the person who created that segment undoubtedly hoped to offend people with it, and by getting offended you only provide him with the satisfaction of success. When triggering people is the point, the best revenge is not to be triggered.

And it’s worth pointing out, Christians are also aristocrats. The New Testament notes that we have been adopted as sons of God, and have a secure inheritance in the kingdom of God. “Do you not know that you will judge angels?” So we can also take an aristocratic perspective on the matter.

Again, different people have different perspectives on this issue, but in the Negative World, we need to learn to get used to these sorts of insults and entrust ourselves to Him who judges righteously.

If Christianity is false, then it deserves to be mocked (see 1 Cor 15:19). But if Christianity is true, these insults aren’t a problem for us, but a problem for them.

Another thing we can do is look around and see who our friends are. While non-Christians who said nothing may not be enemies - there are all sorts of reasons why even someone who thought it was in poor taste might not publicly say anything - those who did speak up are showing that they are potentially friends.

Not every who defends your position needs to be treated as a friend. Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s current Supreme Leader, condemned the program. I don’t want to partner with him. But there are surely many Muslims, Jews, and others of any or no religion in America who have demonstrated they are potential friends or allies by their support.

In a world where there are infinite numbers of causes we could potentially support, I want to prioritize showing solidarity with people who are showing solidarity with me. This incident was a good opportunity to look around and see who some of those people are.