When Distrust is Normalized
Donald Trump has the coronavirus. Or does he?
The scenario instantly plays out in my mind. His campaign is out of cash, his childish behavior in that debate is not resulting in the hoped for bump in polls, his wife is exposed for hating Christmas, his friends are all in need of pardons, his SCOTUS pick is no longer the top of the news. On a Friday it drops that he has the virus, is going into Walter Reed for an experimental vaccine. Man, this doesn’t pass the smell test.
My guess? He’ll be cured this week, tout the new vaccine as the October Trumpian miracle (“I TOLD YOU ALL I’D HAVE A VACCINE!”) and he has made his Hail Mary pass to re-election. I don’t think it’ll work but I can’t trust a president who has lied and manipulated the country for four years and running to be honest about anything.
Trust is a tricky thing. For the most part, we engage in a transactional model of giving and receiving trust. Do things I consider trustworthy and I give you my trust. Do something that breaks that trust and it is taken away until you do enough things to reestablish that trust. Until you break it again. In this way, we say, we earn the trust of others.
Like hope, trust is fragile and amazingly powerful. With it, relationships can grow, employers can instill loyalty, societies can progress in genuinely positive ways. Without it, we all become ineffective solo efforts without enough juice to move past the naval gaze or the frozen burrito wrapper that has been sitting on the coffee table since June.
It is also a reciprocal relationship within ourselves: if we are trustworthy, we are more trusting. If we are not trustworthy, we distrust more.
Tyler was my assistant for five years back in Chicago. I trusted Tyler despite a few red flags in his character because that’s how I roll. I believe trust is given rather than earned and have little faith in the tit-for-tat method of common trust transaction. Trust or do not trust, there is no try. Tyler, apparently, did nottrust me. To be fair to him, I was pretty hard on him. He was an awful combination of incredibly ambitious and passively lazy. He loved the recognition but wasn’t willing to do the work. Consequently, I was on his ass a lot.
Those red flags became apparent when I found out he actively campaigned for the position and aggressively threw two of his colleagues under the bus to get it. When I found out about it, we had a serious conversation and I let him know that that sort of thing was not tolerated. Over time I realized I trusted Tyler but didn’t completely respect him much and the stage was set.
We were friends as well Director and direct report. We co-hosted a podcast together. We worked together on The Moth in Chicago. Hell, I officiated his wedding. Honestly, I have so many fond memories that reconciling them with the endgame is difficult.
At the tail end of those five years, I found out that he was actively campaigning for my job much in the same way he had knifed his colleagues previously. My trust in him — professionally and personally — shattered over night and, like a present I had given that had been tossed in the trash, it was not to be given again. Because he was essentially an untrustworthy person, I was blindsided and never caught up.
In hindsight, though, I can’t say I’d do anything differently had I to do it over again. The breaking of trust is always rough but, if you’re a grown-up, you find a way to forgive and still not forget.
The childish reaction is to state that Tyler was never really my friend but that’s, well, childish. Tyler was my friend until he wasn’t. That’s the way of things. Sometimes trust is broken and ends a relationship. Sometimes the relationship has more value and the adults in the room recognize that they need to do that thing the Zoomers reject as something toxically masculine but I view as absolutely necessary: they get over it.
The Big Lesson is to give trust freely. Try to forgive when it’s broken and give it again if necessary. It isn’t a finite resource any more than hope. Scars happen because the wound healed and scar tissue is thicker and we could all use some thicker skin these days.
I never gave my trust to Trump so I can’t say I’m surprised, outraged, or even disappointed. Do I hope he dies from COVID if, in fact, he actually has it? No. Not because I’m some fucking paragon of virtue but because I want to see him in jail for his crimes. The man deserves far worse than death from his own narcissistic ignorance.
