Hi guys,

This is not maybe the best sub for that, but on election day I wanted to briefly discuss, and see what you think about a problem I noticed: trust. Generally speaking, almost no one trusted the two main candidates we had.

When discussing about Clinton, it was pretty obvious: many arguments, even from non-enthusiastic pro-Clinton voter, were that her positions were "unreliable": she says anything to be elected, she flip-flops completely, and whatever she promises right now she actually won't do it. Indeed, many have accused her of being secretly a neo-con. As a result, if Clinton made an electoral promise, or spoke about an important issue she intend to fix, the answer was: "Yeah, right." basically.

The same phenomenon was seen with Trump, but in reverse. Many Trump supporters had the opinion of: "Oh, he doesn't mean that". It's just political show, but his actual policies would differ strongly from what he says. I've read sentences such as "he's playing as a Republican but once elected will shift the GOP toward the truth" and "I firmly believe he will protect the oceans and the rainforest". Why? Again because of trust: since we cannot trust a politician, we may want to assume that he will actually do the straight opposite of what he's talking about, or that he has a secret plan (4D chess). We don't trust him to a point that we don't want to believe that he would do what he has been promising during the campaign.

 

I'm an outsider. I see US politics through European eyes. But I tend to realise that Americans have zero, or perhaps even negative trust in their politicians. Which as a result strongly harms the political discourse, the campaigns and the whole political landscape.

What do you think about that?