Under the Sun
A little bit of trust
goes a long wayMORE often than not these days, I will wait a couple of beats after the traffic signal trades red for green before toeing the gas pedal to move my car through an intersection. At times, a motorist behind me will tap on the horn or lean hard against it, depending on the degree of impatience.
I understand the irritation and try not to take offense. But I'm not going to bolt just because one colored light entitles me to occupy that piece of road while another prohibits those on the cross street from entering the same space. Not after a dozen close calls with drivers who believe red means stop to everyone but themselves.
Last week, at an intersection where left- and right-turn arrows, pedestrian crossings and straight-through traffic are staggered through 90-second cycles, six automobiles -- an all-time high in my observations -- ran a red light. A woman in a minivan next to me narrowly escaped scraping bumpers with a silvery sort of Batmobile. She looked over at me as if in disbelief and all I could do was shrug in sympathy. She'd trusted that the Batmobile driver would obey the law.
Most of the time people can be trusted to observe the pacts of society, without which chaos would reign. Still, there are liars and cheaters who corrode trust, so we lock doors, stash valuables in safe-deposit boxes and install software to ward off e-mail viruses and hackers. But these evil-doers are small-time operators. The really dangerous trust-busters are those who shave the truth or spin their acts so they appear benevolent.
When George Bush announced his $15 billion global AIDS relief program, many international health organizations praised the compassionate conservative. Others, suspecting there would be knotted strings attached, waited warily for the other shoe to drop. Sure enough, when the cowboy boot hit the dirt, they learned that compassion, curbed by a conservative agenda, will not give money to agencies that provided counseling about birth control and abortion unless they keep separate accounts and facilities, a financially unbearable burden for cash-strapped organizations. At any rate, the numbers Bush announced tally far short of what's in his actual budget plan -- $1 billion. What sounded too good to be true was. Another chip splinters from the rock of trust.
Then there's the "Freedom Car." Bush has pledged to give Detroit automakers $1.2 billion in research bucks to develop hydrogen-powered vehicles so as to release the hold oil producers have on Americans. First, this switch-and-bait tactic diverts attention from much simpler solutions such as raising fuel-efficiency standards that could cut oil imports today instead of in 2020, which is when Bush envisions hydrogen vehicles would be available. But here's the real kick in the pants: Detroit gets the money -- 40 percent of which will be shifted from other fuel-cell projects -- but don't actually have to produce a car. Break off another little piece our trusting hearts.
I'm re-reading "Young Men and Fire," Norman Maclean's elegiac reconstruction of a 1949 Montana wildfire that killed 13 firefighters. Some of them could have survived had they known and trusted their leader's experience and intelligence. The foreman set a small blaze in front of the huge, approaching firestorm, but he did not have time to explain to his men that the big fire, deprived of fuel, would pass around the already burnt area. He lay down in its ashes and lived. They ran and were caught by the flames.
Fear feeds trust and mistrust. With terrorism and endless talk of the need for war whirling around us, some stand by our leaders because to consider them unreliable is too alarming. Some have little confidence in them, as witnessed by the legion of protesters. We've reached this flash point because we've been misled so often. What will get us out is truth and rational discussion. Unlike with the young men racing away from fiery death, there is time to explain.
Cynthia Oi has been on the staff of the Star-Bulletin for 25 years.
She can be reached at: coi@starbulletin.com.