Trust

There’s an old adage that says “Trust but verify.” Several things in my life recently have led me to remember that.

There was a story of NPR this morning as I was eating breakfast about Crypto and Blockchain. It seems to me that Crypto is based, almost exclusively, on trust – trust that the price is legitimate, trust that someone somewhere is keeping good records, trust that it’s worth what I paid for it. And just exactly HOW do I pay for it, and if I want to sell HOW to I get my price? I’m a pretty smart lady, but it feels like Crypto is a gigantic Ponzi scheme. (And, no thank you, I don’t need you to explain it to me one more time.)

Until Richard Nixon, I had a healthy respect and trust for the politicians who basically run our lives. I trusted in their integrity, in their personal objectives, etc. I might not have agreed with them – for instance, I looked at LBJ’s past dealings, and thought he was much more interested in his personal grandiosity than in mine, but I didn’t think he was an outright liar. Nixon’s Watergate removed my rose-colored glasses permanently. Jimmy Carter restored a lot of my faith in the intentions of the Presidency, but I realized that his refusal to play the games of Washington caused him to be ineffective. And those were followed by Reagan’s Iran-Contra affair that permanently burst my balloon of trust.

I will confess that I admire Volodymyr Zelenskyy for the way he has risen to the challenge by keeping his country together and functioning in the face of tremendous odds since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia under Vladimir Putin. However, in the back of my mind, I have a niggling suspicion that maybe, just maybe, he’s not everything he’s cracked up to be. I hate that I have these doubts, but you can blame Nixon for my thoughts.

And speaking of the news – I’ve gotten so that I take all television news with a large grain of salt. I check carefully to find out who owns/controls the station, and I check their sources. In this climate of fast breaking news stories, nobody has time to fact check their sources completely and many outlets don’t even try. I believe most of what Rachel Maddow reports because she is willing to correct herself – on air – even after the fact, usually with an apology.

I also believe things Heather Cox Richardson says and writes, because she is meticulous about footnoting and providing references. Trust AND verify.

My earliest (that I remember) instance of trusting and then being let down was an internal fight in the church I attended through Junior High and High School. It was a large church with four or five ministers, and the head minister became jealous of one of the other preachers. My parent’s minister friend was basically run out of the church. He resigned “for the good of all” but I could never trust any of the other staff there. It took years for me to be able to attend and participate in the work and worship of a church again.

I have never had cause to doubt my husband – thanks be to God. I think he has been absolutely faithful to me and to our kids. That’s not to say we’ve never had any of the problems that inevitably come with a long marriage (almost 58 years now) but infidelity has never been one of those problems,

I generally trust my children to be and do what they promise. We had a couple of incidents of “borrowing” money without asking, but none in the last 40 years. They are both kind and supportive of their wives and families. and they do their best to take care of us when we need additional help.

I wish I had never had any reason to doubt anyone. But…