Have our leaders lied to us? Is it lying if they believed what they said? Did they believe it? How do we know?
How do we metabolise generations of assumptions that are being revealed to be untrue? Some of it seems benevolent and generous. Some of it is clearly evil and self-serving. A lot of it seems like a weird mixture of both.
Who can help us wrestle with any of this at the scale needed?
@AskTheDevil Yes, this is a key point -- how can we ever know that we're seeing outside of the grift?
We're wrapped up in so many interlocking circles of construct, some of it wilfully dishonest.
The blatant, unchecked immorality of too many leaders within all sectors informs us there is no refuge anywhere.
Your point about (presumed) dependence is *huge*!
I'm enough of an optimist to believe that credibility can be built. But it won't be by doggedly perpetuating whatever it is we have now.
@sumpnlikefaith I think part of the problem is that everyone has been living inside _massive_ grifts for so long that even when they see a _part_ of the grift happening, they're so immersed in an unfair and ridiculous system (where most people work really hard to make a few people have it all, and think those people are where wealth and security _comes_ from), that they just revert to business as usual once some individual injustice is news from last Tuesday.