So much of what we do at The Free Press is try to make sense of a world where trust is broken. What many see as a crisis of trust we think is, first and foremost, a crisis of trustworthiness. From government and the media to education and medicine, institutions that fought hard to earn the public’s trust have squandered it.
That change is arguably the story of our time, and once you understand it, you see it everywhere—including in two of the most contentious debates of this moment: over data centers and Flock surveillance cameras. We’ve covered both of these fights here at The Free Press. At root, they get at something much deeper than the technology itself. What’s really at stake is whether trust, once spent, can be earned back at all.
That’s why, when we read Erick Erickson’s essay tracing this breakdown back to the pandemic, we decided to reprint it in our pages. His analysis is unsparing in identifying who’s responsible on both sides of the aisle, and clear-eyed about what it will take to win the public back. We are pleased to bring it to you today. —The Editors
In April of 2020, San Clemente, California, dumped 37 tons of sand into a skate park to keep teenagers out of it. Other California cities followed suit. Up the coast, sheriff’s deputies arrested a man for paddleboarding by himself in the Pacific Ocean. Cities unbolted basketball rims. The mayor of Los Angeles told people that “snitches get rewards” and, God help us, people snitched, calling the tip lines on the neighbors whose grandkids came over. Months later, Gavin Newsom violated his own Covid-19 protocols and enjoyed a dinner at The French Laundry.
The sand, the arrest, the missing basketball rims, the rewarded snitches, and the elite hypocrisy explain a lot about where we are as a nation, including things that look like they have nothing to do with Covid, like data centers and Flock cameras.
In March 2020, Americans did as they were told. People closed businesses, local governments closed schools, and families canceled funerals. They waited for instructions from their elected leaders and public health officials because those officials said we needed two weeks to stop the spread. People generally trusted their institutions. Civic trust is a limited resource in a free nation. The press, politicians, bureaucrats, experts, and elite violated that trust until it was gone.
Facts Only
* San Clemente, California: 37 tons of sand were dumped into a skate park in April 2020.
* Other California cities followed suit in dumping sand.
* Sheriff’s deputies arrested a man for paddleboarding alone in the Pacific Ocean.
* Cities unbolted basketball rims.
* The mayor of Los Angeles stated that "snitches get rewards."
* Gavin Newsom reportedly violated Covid-19 protocols and dined at The French Laundry.
* Americans closed businesses, local governments closed schools, and families canceled funerals in March 2020 following public health instructions.
* People generally trusted their institutions during the initial response to the pandemic.
Executive Summary
Full Take
The narrative constructs a bridge between immediate, tangible acts of perceived hypocrisy—like environmental actions or localized law enforcement responses—and a deeper systemic failure concerning institutional trustworthiness. The function of juxtaposing disparate events (sand dumping, COVID protocols, surveillance technology) is to suggest that the erosion of trust is not isolated but is a pervasive quality infecting all areas of public life, regardless of topic. The underlying pattern suggests that when institutions violate agreed-upon norms or protocols, it damages the collective capacity for future cooperation, framing the current debates over data centers and surveillance as symptomatic expressions of this deeper collapse of faith. This suggests that understanding the technological disputes requires recognizing the shared history of institutional accountability. The core implication is that regaining public trust depends on rectifying a pattern where perceived elite actions undermine collective adherence to shared responsibilities.
What aspects of historical precedent regarding broken civic trust influence present-day skepticism toward governmental and media narratives? How can an analysis centered on institutional betrayal be used to foster concrete pathways for rebuilding trust, rather than simply cataloging the deficit? What specific mechanisms govern the differential experience of trust among various segments of the public when institutions fail in their duties?