Thread by @Cobretata

American culture and politics are largely based on assuming the worst intentions and motivations for everything individuals say and do. Imagine where we could go if we flipped that script and assumed the best: trusting each other, showing patience and forgiveness.

There would be mistakes and debacles, of course. People are not always worthy of trust. They don't always respond to goodwill in kind. Sometimes it's a mistake to assume good intentions. People don't always take the second chance offered by forgiveness.

We wouldn't want to become utterly naive or dangerously ignorant, of course, but in our conversations and culture, we've grown dangerously short of goodwill, and that is a vital resource for a functioning civil society, a nation of sovereign individuals who value liberty.

That shortage of goodwill is no accident. It was carefully engineered over decades by opportunistic political forces who want us to distrust each other, so we turn to them instead of cooperating, competing, and helping.

We were taught to hate and distrust each other, to think of ourselves as criminals who must be punished by the all-powerful State, carefully controlled and monitored to ensure good behavior. Our ruling class makes it very clear they feel no goodwill towards us.

We're reached the point where the presumption of good intentions is a special privilege reserved for the left-wing elite and their clients. They demand limitless credit for good intentions no matter what horrible things they say, or how destructive their policies are.

As our culture has been strip-mined of goodwill, we've lost our sense of humor, our appreciation for charity, belief in high standards that everyone should strive to reach, respect for aspirations and admiration for achievement. It's all ugly, cynical identity politics now.

Identity politics is the total absence of goodwill, the antithesis of a strong civil society. Guilt is presumed instead of innocence. People are hunted and destroyed for careless words. Children are punished for the sins of their long-dead ancestors. There is no mercy.

Intentions are not understood, but forcibly imputed. The State claims it can read our minds and see into our hearts, while our ability to understand one another is systematically destroyed. Universal standards are treated like oppression instead of elevation.

The elimination of goodwill was a key step in transitioning from charity to welfare dependency. We were instructed, contrary to all evidence, that free people cannot be trusted to help each other, and only the State truly cares for our well-being.

Marginalizing religion was important to eliminating goodwill. Judeo-Christian ideals of forgiveness, mercy, charity, and redemption were inconvenient to the statists, so they were ruthlessly excised from our culture - mocked and impugned, replaced with bleak cynicism.

One reason the Left is on a slash-and-burn campaign against history is that it doesn't want anyone to remember times when those ideals were cherished and woven into our society. We are only allowed to remember when our forefathers stumbled, not when they soared.

It would be difficult to reverse this descent into institutionalized cynicism and replace the new religion of bad faith with the older, better, brighter traditions it displaced. There are too many rich and powerful interests that need us to keep thinking the worst of each other.

Generations of institutional conditioning and messages blasted incessantly from popular culture are not easily countered. It's hard to even know where to begin. How do you clean up cultural pollution while the land is still covered with ugly smokestacks belching out poison?

But if only we could start thinking better of one another, if only we made a combined effort to turn away from cynicism, identity politics, cancel culture - all the rot that flourishes in the dark, once the light of goodwill is extinguished - our political class might follow.

Maybe the downward spiral is universal. No one wants to be the first to disarm, to be the one trusting sheep in a land full of wolves, to lower their defenses and stop demanding political attention for their grievances. We're headed toward authoritarianism, not trust and freedom.

But we COULD pull out of the dive. If any nation could, it's America. We could start looking at each other and seeing only Americans tomorrow. We could start taking it easy on each other, laughing instead of scowling, looking for the best instead of dreading the worst.

We could start showing who we are, instead of making assumptions. We could forgive instead of nursing grievances. We could make offers instead of demands. We could bring goodwill back and presume innocence again. /end