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In the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, gangs have bulldozed a police station with large trucks. Armed gangs control 80 percent of the city and are looting and burning buildings in entire neighborhoods. The underfunded police have abandoned some neighborhoods and many officers have fled. In the law enforcement vacuum, some neighborhoods have seen some 60 vigilante lynchings and the health system is collapsing.
The horrific drama unfolding in Haiti, so close to our shores, is making our own political theater seem like a soap opera.
I'm not objective about that contrast. A few years ago, I presided over a horrific three-vehicle accident on a rural freeway during a snowstorm. I'll never forget the dramatic testimony, photos and video of emergency responders quickly arriving on the scene, highway patrol officers clearing dangerous traffic and emergency personnel working to treat the woman still trapped in her vehicle while firefighters unloaded their heavy equipment.
In our country, if you ask for help, someone will come.
It is true that even here the police sometimes lose control of the streets, and in some areas they respond too slowly to emergencies, but these are unacceptable shortcomings and we will improve them.
The latest bleak report on trust in government, this one from The Economist, is blatantly titled “Trust in American government institutions has collapsed.” I don't believe it.
Take the trendiest woke ideologue or most ardent conspiracy theorist: If their partner collapses or they hear glass breaking at 2 a.m., you can bet they're going to call 911 and trust that someone will come. Now.
I complain about the potholes in the road, but I trust that I won't be stopped at a checkpoint manned by AK-47-toting gangsters. I trust that water comes from the taps. I trust that my trash will be collected.
And trust isn't just explained by attachment to local government: Trust in local government is about as high as it was in 1960. But when it comes to matters important to our lives, people also trust the federal government.
Judging by the carefree attitude of people shopping at grocery and drug stores, most people trust the safety of their food and medicines. A great many people also seem to trust the safety of their stock market investments. And while Social Security benefits may adjust over the next few decades, we retirees trust that our checks won't stop coming next month.
I know there are skeptics who don't trust American foreign policy, immigration policy, or climate policy. But for most of us, those are distant abstractions created from partisan images planted by advocates and activists with agendas. Speaking of personal experience, I believe we are in a fabric of good people who have come together to help each other.
Harvard cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker says we see the world in two zones: We apply our idea of reality to the people and things around us and to the rules and norms that regulate our lives. Because we live in this zone, our beliefs about these things must be accurate.
But for far-flung peoples and places, and distant corridors of power, we have mythical beliefs. These beliefs don't have to be accurate, since they make no tangible difference to our lives. Rather, they serve to bind tribes together.
We are surrounded by myths that are divorced from personal experience. I strongly suspect that very few of the people who categorically distrust the government in securing our borders have ever suffered because of immigration. I am equally certain that very few of the people who vocally distrust the government's policies toward Israel have ever spoken to an Israeli or a Hamas fighter.
I'm not criticizing people for having strong opinions about things outside of their realm of experience, just that those opinions don't necessarily have to be accurate.
We humans seem to have the capacity to retweet the latest indictment of the Washington swamp of sordidness and then calmly sit in our airplane seats.
Economists seem to have used mythical thinking to our detriment.
Creating institutions that allow suspicious people to trust each other is one of humanity's greatest achievements. The basic human condition is chaos, and it gives rise to bands of predators (yes, men).
We know that it has happened before: in the 15th century, for example, Europe was divided into 5,000 gangland fiefdoms called “baronies,” from which warlords called “knights” terrorized peasants and raided each other.
We see this happening today, with more than 120 militias, or gangs, operating in the chaotic eastern Congo, and now some 300 militias operating in Haiti.
And we've seen the marauders in “Mad Max” and “The Walking Dead,” so we know it's a possibility in the future.
Dictators can quell chaos at great human cost: people are forced to suffer the violence of others in exchange for the tyrant's oppression.
But a democratic order such as ours can only be built by the wisdom, energy, goodwill, and, of course, trust of good people. The United States is a particularly great example of how we intentionally built bonds of trust. Those brave souls in 1776 trusted each other to stay together, not die separately.
The coming election campaign will exploit all of our negative attitudes toward government and each other. Yes, we have serious problems that need fixing: climate change, injustice, immigration. Many people feel that their government is not serving them well.
But our country has a 250-year-old foundation of trust and goodwill on which to build solutions. We must commit to protecting this foundation. Let us start by taking time to think of the suffering people of Haiti, to understand what a true breakdown in trust looks like, and to remember the difference between reality and myth.
Bruce Peterson is a senior district judge and teaches a class on lawyers as peacemakers at the University of Minnesota Law School.
