Liquidating America: The Strip-Mining Of Trust

There is a feeling many Americans struggle to articulate. It is not merely frustration with politics. It is not simply disagreement over policy. It is not even the familiar tension of partisanship. It is unease — a sense that something foundational has weakened. Something that once stabilized our disagreements. Something that once made conflict survivable. Something that once made institutions feel reliable, even when imperfect.

That “something” is trust.

What if the deepest crisis facing America today is not inflation, immigration, global conflict, or media polarization? What if it is the systematic erosion — even the strip-mining — of civic trust?

Trust Is Not Sentiment. It Is Infrastructure.

We often treat trust as an emotional quality. In reality, it is structural. Trust is civic infrastructure. It is the invisible architecture that allows strangers to cooperate at scale. Economists and political theorists have long understood this. Francis Fukuyama argued that high-trust societies outperform low-trust societies economically because they require fewer contracts, less enforcement, and fewer defensive expenditures. Robert Putnam demonstrated that declining social capital correlates with declining democratic participation and civic health.

Trust reduces transaction costs. Trust reduces surveillance needs. Trust reduces fear. When trust erodes, friction expands.

A low-trust society must hire more compliance officers. It must deploy more enforcement mechanisms.

It must litigate more disputes. It must monitor more behavior.

GDP can rise while trust collapses. Enforcement spending registers as “growth.” But that growth often reflects the replacement of voluntary cooperation with institutional coercion.

The result looks like efficiency. It is not. It is conversion — the conversion of social capital into enforcement capital.

The Founders’ Fragile Assumption

The American constitutional system was not built on enforcement alone. It was built on an assumption of civic virtue.

James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 51 that ambition must counteract ambition. But he also assumed a baseline of legitimacy and restraint. George Washington warned against factionalism overwhelming national unity. John Adams famously observed that the Constitution was made “only for a moral and religious people,” wholly inadequate for governing any other.

This was not a theological claim; it was sociological. A republic requires restraint. Restraint requires norms. Norms require trust. When trust erodes, legal structures strain under pressures they were never designed to bear alone.

The Weaponization of Legal Mechanisms

Recent reporting has documented episodes in which federal prosecutors were pressured to pursue sedition charges against members of Congress for political speech. A grand jury declined to indict.

Regardless of partisan alignment, the structural implications are profound.

The Justice Department functions because Americans broadly believe:

Prosecutorial discretion is grounded in law.
Charges are not filed to intimidate dissent.
Grand juries are not instruments of retaliation.

Even the appearance that legal mechanisms may be mobilized for political ends weakens institutional confidence.

Hannah Arendt observed that one hallmark of democratic erosion is the selective application of legal processes to chill opposition. The danger is not only unjust conviction. It is the normalization of intimidation.

Trust in the neutrality of law is slow to build. It is fast to erode.

Immigration Enforcement and the Climate of Fear

Across the country, federal authorities are expanding detention capacity, including the purchase of industrial warehouses to convert into large-scale facilities. Even in communities supportive of strict border policies, residents have raised concerns about transparency, infrastructure strain, and coordination. Healthcare providers have reported patients avoiding medical care out of fear of enforcement visibility. Tribal leaders have described difficulty obtaining clear information about alleged detentions involving Native citizens.

Whatever one’s position on immigration policy, a society in which patients fear hospitals is not stable. Public health depends on trust. Treaty obligations depend on trust. Federal-local cooperation depends on trust. When federal agencies are perceived as opaque or unresponsive, suspicion fills the vacuum. Suspicion spreads rapidly in an era of digital amplification.

Fear, once normalized, is difficult to reverse.

Public Health and Institutional Memory

The withdrawal from the World Health Organization was framed as an assertion of sovereignty and fiscal prudence. Yet subsequent proposals indicate a willingness to spend significantly more to replicate global surveillance systems previously accessed at lower cost.

Public health infrastructure operates quietly. Its value becomes visible only during a crisis. The 1918 influenza pandemic spread in part because wartime governments suppressed information. The Ebola outbreak illustrated the necessity of cross-border coordination. COVID revealed how fragile global information networks can be.

Institutions accumulate relational capital. Relationships accumulate trust. Trust enables rapid coordination. When shared institutions are dismantled, rebuilding relational trust takes far longer than rebuilding physical infrastructure.

Global public health cooperation is not charity. It is self-interest grounded in realism.

The Epistemic Commons

Trust is not only institutional. It is informational. The 1964 Supreme Court decision in New York Times v. Sullivan established a high bar for public officials to succeed in defamation cases. The “actual malice” standard protects robust debate about those in power.

Press freedom is not a partisan preference; it is a democratic safeguard. Simultaneously, digital platforms have transformed information ecosystems. Charles Goodhart warned that once a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. When engagement becomes the target, outrage becomes profitable. When outrage becomes profitable, moderation becomes uncompetitive.

This dynamic is structural, not partisan. But leadership either amplifies or dampens it. When leaders broadly delegitimize media institutions, public confidence in shared informational ground erodes. A democracy cannot function without some shared understanding of reality.

The epistemic commons — the shared space of credible information — is fragile. Once fractured, it is extraordinarily difficult to reconstruct.

Generational Trust

Recent polling indicates declining confidence among younger Americans across multiple policy areas. Whether on healthcare, economic security, foreign policy, or immigration, generational skepticism appears to be rising. Generational trust stabilizes democracy. Younger citizens must believe that institutions, while imperfect, are not being liquidated for short-term advantage. Thomas Jefferson wrote of liberty as a “sacred deposit” to be preserved for the next generation. When younger citizens perceive institutional decay, disengagement or radicalization follows. Neither strengthens democracy.

Intergenerational trust is an underappreciated pillar of stability.

What Is Institutional Corruption?

Corruption is often defined narrowly as personal financial enrichment. But institutional corruption can also mean distortion of purpose.

When legal mechanisms appear politicized, institutional purpose is questioned. When public health decisions become entangled with partisan signaling, institutional purpose is questioned. When enforcement expands without transparent coordination, institutional purpose is questioned. When press protections weaken while misinformation accelerates, institutional purpose is questioned.

Corruption, in this broader sense, is deviation from mission. Deviation erodes trust. Trust erosion increases enforcement costs. Enforcement expansion further erodes trust. The cycle accelerates.

The Moral Ecology of Leadership

Public office carries symbolic weight. The presidency is not merely administrative. It sets the tone. It shapes civic culture. When discourse becomes mocking rather than measured, when humiliation becomes entertainment, when opponents become enemies rather than adversaries, norms degrade.

Norms are not codified statutes. They are transmitted culturally. They rely on restraint.

George Washington’s Farewell Address was an appeal to character, not enforcement. The health of a republic depends on civic character — both among leaders and citizens.

The Illusion of Prosperity

It is possible to mistake expansion for strength. Detention capacity can expand. Enforcement budgets can grow. Litigation can increase. Political fundraising can soar. All of these register as activity.

But activity is not cohesion. When trust declines, governance becomes more expensive and less effective. Low-trust societies require more policing, more monitoring, more defensive structures.

The system still functions — until it doesn’t.

Erosion is incremental. Liquidation feels efficient in the short term. But liquidation sacrifices long-term viability for immediate gain.

Historical Warnings

History rarely announces democratic erosion with clarity. The late Roman Republic retained elections long after elite trust had disintegrated. Weimar Germany maintained formal legal processes even as legitimacy evaporated.

Republics rarely fall in a single moment. They fray. They corrode. They hollow.

Corrosion is subtle. No single policy destroys trust. No single speech erodes norms. No single enforcement action collapses legitimacy. But cumulative distortion does.

Binding Power Again

Markets have been bound before. Child labor was once economically efficient. Environmental pollution once reduced costs. Unsafe workplaces once boosted profit margins.

Binding markets did not destroy capitalism. It preserved social stability.

Similarly, binding political power strengthens democracy. Oversight is not obstruction. Transparency is not weakness. Professional civil service is not bureaucracy for its own sake. Protected press is not an inconvenience. Independent judiciary is not partisan. These are stabilizers.

Trust cannot be legislated into existence. But its destruction can be slowed. Its conditions can be protected. Repeated interaction. Long time horizons. Professional autonomy. Clear boundaries on enforcement. Respect for dissent. These are not utopian ideals. They are practical safeguards.

Stewardship or Extraction?

We are not at collapse, but we are in corrosion. The courts still convene. Elections still occur. Markets still function. Hospitals still operate. But corrosion weakens beams before collapse is visible.

The question before us is not left versus right. It is extraction versus stewardship. Are we strip-mining civic trust for short-term political advantage, or preserving it for generational stability? Are we amplifying outrage because it mobilizes, or reinforcing norms because they stabilize? Are we liquidating institutional legitimacy, or strengthening it?

Trust, once fully eroded, cannot be purchased quickly. No enforcement regime can substitute for it. No budget can rebuild it overnight.

The republic is not self-sustaining. It depends on what we preserve.

The Work Ahead

The handshake may not return. The slower news cycle may not return. The quieter civic culture may not return.

But binding can return. Restraint can return. Professional integrity can return. Civic humility can return.

Democracy is not a machine that runs automatically. It is an ecosystem. It depends on relational capital as much as constitutional text.

Trust is the commons that makes all other commons possible. If we liquidate it, no metric will warn us in time. If we protect it, much else becomes manageable.

The corrosion is visible. The question is whether we recognize it — and choose stewardship over extraction.

Episode Summary Points:

The Corrosion of Trust as a National Crisis: Trust is not a sentimental value but the foundation of society, essential for cooperation, reducing fear, and lowering transactional costs. Its erosion masquerades as growth, creating the illusion of efficiency while destabilizing institutions. From law enforcement to public administration, low-trust systems require more surveillance, litigation, and enforcement, making governance more expensive and fragile.
Institutional Distortion and Political Weaponization: The politicization of the justice system, combined with the use of legal mechanisms to intimidate dissent, exemplifies how institutional processes can be mobilized for political ends. Even when formal safeguards exist, erosion of norms and prosecutorial discretion undermines civic trust and weakens systemic competence.
Public Health and Informational Trust Undermined: Decisions like the withdrawal from the World Health Organization and mismanagement of pandemic responses illustrate how dismantling institutional memory and global cooperation generates long-term vulnerabilities. Public health, treaty compliance, and crisis response depend on trust, which, once eroded, takes decades to rebuild.
Media, Misinformation, and the Collapse of Shared Reality: Digital platforms and political leadership can amplify outrage, degrade moderation, and distort public information ecosystems. When engagement is driven by outrage, trust in shared facts collapses, threatening the structural foundations of democracy and making civic norms fragile and contested.
Intergenerational Trust and the Threat to Civic Continuity: Young Americans’ declining trust in institutions, combined with the liquidation of civic norms and institutional integrity, threatens the transference of republican governance across generations. When trust is treated as a disposable asset for short-term gain, societal participation declines and systemic stability erodes.
Restoring Civic Stability Through Norms and Oversight: Despite corrosion, the episode emphasizes that democracy is not irreparably broken. Civic trust, ethical leadership, independent judiciary, press protections, and professional oversight remain guardrails. Rebuilding these structures, reinforcing norms, and prioritizing stewardship over extraction can restore binding civic cohesion and protect the republic from collapse.

References for Podcast 164:

Acemoglu, D., & Robinson, J. A. (2012). Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. Crown Publishing.
Adams, J. (1798, October 11). Letter to the Officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts. In C. F. Adams (Ed.), The works of John Adams (Vol. 9). Little, Brown and Company.
Arendt, H. (1951). The Origins of Totalitarianism. Harcourt, Brace & Company.
Bogage, J., & Sun, L. H. (2026, February 19). After leaving WHO, Trump officials propose more expensive replacement to duplicate it. The Washington Post.
Butler, Adam, (February 9, 2026). The Strip-Mining of Trust. Panoptica. Feuer, A., Thrush, G., & Schmidt, M. S. (2026, February 18). A Case Against 6 Democrats Lacked Urgency. Then Came a Swift Bid for an Indictment. The New York Times.
Fukuyama, F. (1995). Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity. Free Press.
Goodhart, C. A. E. (1975). Problems of monetary management: The U.K. Experience. In Papers in monetary economics (Vol. 1). Reserve Bank of Australia. Jefferson, T. (1789, September 6). Letter to James Madison. In J. Boyd (Ed.), The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (Vol. 15). Princeton University Press.
Levitsky, S., & Ziblatt, D. (2018). How Democracies Die. Crown.
Liptak, A. (2026, February 19). A Major First Amendment Ruling at Risk. The New York Times.
Madison, J. (1788). Federalist No. 51. In A. Hamilton, J. Madison, & J. Jay, The Federalist papers. New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964).
Putnam, R. D. (2000). Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Amazon.
Schneid, R. (2026, February 17). Young Voters are Turning Away from Trump. TIME.
Smith, A. (1759). The theory of moral sentiments. A. Millar.
Tocqueville, A. de. (1835/1840). Democracy in America. Saunders and Otley.
Washington, G. (1796). Farewell address.
Whidden, E., Canada, R., & Owen, D. D. (2026, February 19). Our Patients Are More Frightened and Sicker Than Ever. The New York Times.

Consider becoming a patron on Patreon. Your support helps us continue to produce in-depth content, bring you crucial insights, and amplify the voices fighting for a truly representative republic. Join our community and help us safeguard the future of American democracy here.

—

Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Liquidating America: The Strip-Mining Of Trust

I have titled this episode, Liquidating America, the Strip Mining of Trust. The reason I have done that is that one of my friends and supporters of the show has given me an article that I think is really essential for all of us to hear. That is the reason that I am doing this. It is really important to hear what the ideas and things are. I have combined it with a number of examples of things that are happening in America, where we are simply eroding trust.

I want to name the corrosion of trust. For years now, many Americans have held something that was difficult, and it was hard to articulate. Not just anger, not just disagreement, not just partisan friction, but unease. A sense that something foundational has weakened, something that once allowed disagreement without collapse, something that once made political conflict survivable, something that once made institutions feel stable, even when imperfect.

That something is trust. I want to explore that profound idea. What if the deepest crisis facing America is not inflation, immigration, elections, or foreign policy? What if it is the strip mining of trust itself? I think that is what is happening. Trust is not sentimental. It is a part of the foundation of our country. We tend to think of trust as a feeling, but political theorists, economists, and socialists have long understood that trust is infrastructure. It is the civic capital. It is what allows strangers to cooperate at various levels.

[bctt tweet=”Trust is not sentimental; it is a part of the foundation of our country.” via=”no”]

Adam Smith is a theorist of moral sentiment, and he argues that the market relies on moral norms embedded in our society. Commerce collapses when honesty and fairness disappear. James Madison wrote in The Federalist, in number 51, that institutions must be designed for ambition, but institutions also need to be ones that cannot substitute anything for civic virtue.

We have observations in 1835 in the American Democratic function, formed voluntarily as associations. We have churches, we have clubs, and we have civic groups that are built among neighbors. Robert Putnam more recently documented the erosion of those associations. When social capital declines, when democratic participation declines, then things happen to these institutions. Trust reduces transactional costs.

Trust reduces enforcement needs. Trust reduces fear. That is not happening in the America we live in now. A high-trust society spends less on surveillance, less on litigation, and less on many things that have to do with our society. A low-trust society builds more prisons, hires more lawyers, deploys more compliance systems, and invests more in monitoring its own citizens. That is what is happening.

There is no trust. The tragedy is that the decline of trust can masquerade as growth. GDP can rise, enforcement expands, systems become more efficient, but efficiency is not a way to function when it is based on enforcement and systems being changed so much that they are not efficient. We are seeing the Justice Department having such an erosion in the people who will work there that it has become a private law firm for Trump.

[bctt tweet=”The tragedy is that the decline of trust can masquerade as growth.” via=”no”]

That is the thing that we see has dramatically changed. The Justice Department is no longer a representation of us. It is a representation of mega-republicans in America. The founders had a fragile assumption. The American constitutional system was built on a delicate balance. The founders distrusted concentrated power, which I think we see now. They were very smart not to trust concentrated power, but they trusted that citizens would remain capable of self-government.

The current control over Congress shows that the group that is controlling it has no trust in the citizens of the United States. The founders trusted the power of the citizens of the United States and knew that they were able to self-govern. Washington warned against working toward a system of national unity with trust at its basis. John Adams warned that the Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people, and it was wholly inadequate to govern any others. We have to have a moral code in order to do what we’re doing.

John Adams statement about the fact that the Constitution was made only for moral and religious people. He was also saying it was wholly inadequate to govern any other. In other words, we have to have moral and religious people. Morality is not seen in the religious fanaticism of MAGAs. John Adams’s statement is not theoretical. It is sociological. A republic requires restraint. Restraint replaces norms. Norms require trust.

When restraint collapses, legal guidelines alone cannot stabilize the system. That is the reason we’re here where we are. The weaponizing of the legal mechanisms is something that is destructive to having any kind of trust. Recent reporting has detailed pressure placed on the federal prosecutors to pursue seditious charges against members of Congress after they released a video reminding military personnel that they are not required to obey illegal orders.

[bctt tweet=”The weaponizing of legal mechanisms is destructive to any kind of trust.” via=”no”]

The grand jury declined to indict them, but the episode reveals something very significant. I am adding to what I have said in the previous episode about this situation. The Justice Department functions because Americans broadly believe that prosecutorial discretion is grounded in law. That is not what is happening now. Charges are not filed to intimidate dissent. That is what the effort was with these congressional members. It was an effort to stop them from their dissent.

Grand juries are not tools of political retaliation. We saw that because the grand jury would not indict them. When the appearance emerges that legal processes may be mobilized for political ends, institutional competence weakens. Even if formal safeguards still function. In the analysis of authoritarian systems, Hannah Arendt noted that the use of legal mechanisms to create a climate of fear can be more destabilizing than overt repression.

The danger is not only unjust convictions, but it also has a chilling effect. Trust is the neutrality of law, and it is slow to build. It can be fast in its erosion, and we have seen it. Let us look at the immigration enforcement and the climate of fear. Across the country, federal authorities are expanding detention infrastructures, purchasing warehouses to convert into large-scale facilities. Even in communities that support strict border policies, local residents have expressed concern about transparency, infrastructure strain, and public safety implications.

There is no safety for immigrants in America. I read an article about tribal leaders, and they have reported tremendous difficulty in obtaining any information regarding the alleged detention of Native American citizens. They are not immigrants. They were here long before we were. Their families were here and yet Native Americans have been picked up. The negative leaders probably cannot find out where they are. Whatever one’s position on immigration policy, a society where patients are afraid to seek medical care is not stable.

[bctt tweet=”When engagement becomes the target, outrage becomes profitable. When outrage becomes profitable, moderation becomes nonexistent.” via=”no”]

Public health depends on trust. Treaty obligations depend on trust. Federal-local cooperation depends on trust. When federal institutions are perceived as oblique or as unresponsive, suspicions fill the gap. Suspicion multiplies quickly in an era of algorithms that amplify what is being done.

Now, let us look at public health. Let us look at the global withdrawal and the institutional memory. The decision to withdraw from the World Health Organization was framed as a cost-cutting and sovereignty-restoring move. Proposals suggested spending approximately two billion annually to replicate disease surveillance systems previously accessed at lower costs with the World Health Organization.

Public health experts have repeatedly emphasized that global cooperation reduces long-term vulnerability. What is being set up by Trump and Kennedy is creating a long-term vulnerability because we do not have the total knowledge base that comes from being a part of the World Health Organization. People all over the world contributed to finding answers for COVID. It was not just in America. The 1918 influenza pandemic spread rapidly because information was suppressed during wartime.

The Ebola outbreak demonstrated the necessity of cross-border cooperation, and COVID revealed the cost of delayed transparency. Trump was the one who delayed it until President Biden got in. Institutions accumulate memory. Relationships accumulate trust. Trust allows rapid information sharing. When institutions are dismantled and then rebuilt, trust can take decades because we know the type of people who are part of Kennedy’s efforts in public health.

[bctt tweet=”Democracy cannot function without some shared reality.” via=”no”]

Public health infrastructure is invisible until a crisis exposes its absence. Trust is not only institutional, but it is also informational. We cannot have information that we cannot trust. We know that most of the time, we receive from the White House one lie after another, or from congressional members who are a part of the GOP.

The New York Times versus Sullivan established the actual malice standards in 1964 to protect robust debate about public officials. That ruling recognized a core democratic truth. Citizens must be able to criticize power without fear of crippling litigation. Simultaneously, digital platforms have transformed information ecosystems.

Charles Goodhart warned that once a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. When engagement becomes the target, outrage becomes profitable. When outrage becomes profitable, moderation becomes non-existent. When moderation becomes uncompetitive, trust in shared facts collapses. This is not a partisan phenomenon. It is a structural problem. Leadership can easily amplify outrageous cycles or dampen them. We see it constantly. There is a shift and an outrage, so we do not have to see something that the President of the United States is doing.

When leaders attack media institutions broadly as illegitimate, it may energize supporters in the short term, but it also erodes public confidence in any shared informational ground. A democracy cannot function without some shared reality. We get to the generational trust. Recently, I have read an article where there is a tremendous withdrawal of young people in supporting Trump, and what is happening in America.

[bctt tweet=”The tone set by leadership shapes civic culture. When discourse becomes mocking rather than measured, when humiliation becomes entertainment, and when opponents become enemies rather than adversaries, civic norms degrade.” via=”no”]

Recently, polling data indicate there is a major decline in the approval of young voters across multiple policy areas, from healthcare to economic security to foreign policy to immigration to enforcement. Regardless of partisan affiliation, generational trust is a stabilizing force. When young citizens believe institutions are unstable or are self-serving, participation drops, or rationalization increases by those who become fearful that they are going to lose power.

Now, it is destabilizing. The founders assumed that each generation would preserve the republic for the next. Thomas Jefferson wrote of the sacred deposit of liberty. Intergenerational trust means believing the system, while imperfect, is not being liquidated for short-term advantages. That is what I think is happening with the actions that are being taken by the GOP Congress, as well as Trump.

What is institutional corruption? Corruption is often defined narrowly as personal financial gain. Institutional corruption also means deviation from purpose. When the Justice Department appears politicized, even temporarily, institutional purpose is questioned. When public health policy becomes entangled with political signaling, institutional purpose is questioned. There is no question about what is happening. The GOP is trying to form a new concept of healthcare and has left science behind.

When press protections are weakened while digital misinformation expands, institutional purpose is constantly questioned. When press protections are weakened, while digital misinformation expands, institutional purpose is questioned. There is no question in my mind for me that the Trump campaign was based on misinformation.

[bctt tweet=”The fall of republics rarely begins with tanks. It begins with the erosion of norms.” via=”no”]

Corruption in this broader sense is a distortion. Distortion erodes trust. What is the moral economy, and what is the civic character? Practitioners said, first, do no harm. Public office is not merely administrative. It is moral. The presidency carries symbolic weight. The presidency carries symbolic weight, not wealth. My problem is I know how much wealth Trump has gained from being President of the United States and continues to do so. The presidency carries symbolic weight. The tone set by leadership shapes civic culture.

When discourse becomes mocking rather than measured, when humiliation becomes entertainment, when opponents become enemies rather than adversaries, civic norms degrade. Norms are fragile. They are transmitted culturally, not legally. George Washington’s final address was an appeal not to law, but to character. We have lost the character we had in this country. The health of the Republic is inseparable from the character of its leadership and its citizens.

The illusion of prosperity, the essay that I found, really has a devastating line that my friend sent me. It is not progress, it is liquidation. Liquidation is what happens when assets are sold off for immediate gain without regard to long-term viability. Trust can be liquidated, which it has been. Institutional legitimacy can be liquidated, all while metrics look strong.

Stock markets may rise. Enforcement capability may expand. Political fundraising may increase. If trust declines, the cost of governance rises exponentially. A low-trust society is more expensive, more volatile, more fragile. That is the reason that our debt is not going down. It is going up for our country.

History often provides us with a sobering lesson. Weimar Germany experienced legal processes that formally functioned until trust collapsed. The late Roman Republic maintained elections long after elite trust disengaged. The fall of republics rarely begins with tanks. It begins with the erosion of norms. Erosion feels incremental. No single action collapses trust, but the accumulation of distortions destroys trust.

What is the binding power? Where is it? Markets have been bound before. Child labor was once efficient, but it was changed because of the impact on children. Environmental pollution was once cost-effective. It is not cost-effective today. It is a health crisis. Unsafe workplaces once increased profit margins, yet the people who worked there had massive problems. Binding markets did not destroy capitalism. It preserved civilization.

Binding political power does not weaken democracy. It strengthens it. Oversight and transparency are what are lacking currently. Oversight that is not politicized, oversight that is not partisan, can be very helpful. Independent judiciary, protected press, professional civil service, these are not partisan preferences. They are structures of stability.

What now? We are not at collapse yet, but we are at a corrosion level. Corrosion does not announce itself dramatically. It accumulates quietly. The water still runs. The courts still meet. The elections still occur, but corruption weakens the beams of our country. Beams matter. The choice before us is not left versus right in the political system. It is extraction versus stewardship.

It is extraction versus stewardship. There is no stewardship in what is happening in a Republican-controlled Congress or what is happening with the president. Are we strip mining civic trust for short-term advantage? That is exactly what is happening. Are we preserving it for generational stability? No. Are we amplifying outrage? We see it every day. Are we reinforcing norms? That is what the resistance is all about. There is a demand to reinforce norms we have had in the past. Are we liquidating institutions? We saw how it happened. We’re always strengthening them.

I want to close with these comments. Trust is an invisible thing that needs to be present. It is devastating when it is absent. The handshake may not return. The small town newspaper may not return. The slower, quieter political culture may not return, but the binding can return to where we go back to the norms that we had prior to the emergence of the current Republican Party.

Restraint can return. Oversight can return with ethics. Professional integrity can return. Civic humility can return. Democracy does not have to collapse in a single moment. It frays, it corrodes, it becomes hollow. One day, it breaks. We still have time. The corrosion is very visible to all of us. The guard rails are strained, but they are not gone because the guard rails are the resistance. The question is whether we will recognize that trust as the common is something that we are going to reestablish and something that will protect us all.

I thank you so much for tuning in. I do want you to look at my reference list because the article my friend sent is for Adam. I would encourage you to read it. Now, the thing I am going to ask you is, I am asking you to support me on Patreon if you really believe that the things I am saying are really valuable to you. It is only $5 a month, but it means a lot to me and supports the efforts that I do. Thank you for tuning in.