The Internet is great for many things: bringing people together, streaming entertainment (I don’t have cable, so that’s how I watch TV), allowing quick access to products and services around the world, the ability for some to work remotely, and more. And then there are the other things.

Trolls. Division. Frustration when systems fail and make working more difficult than it has to be (when company email decides to throw out errors when your work relies so heavily on it … yeah, that’s a problem). Sock-puppet accounts. Misunderstandings. And the lies. Oh, so many lies.

A friend recently asked me why I don’t trust the word of a certain politician (specifically regarding a certain restaurant). I had to tell him it was because she has a lack of credibility, having a confirmed history of lying to the press and others, as well as a history of being awfully quick to paint herself as a victim in several situations when it just wasn’t warranted. That credibility gap matters.

The same goes for one of my trolls (above), who has made several claims about me (such as my having written an entire column claiming I’m nonpartisan, though I’ve certainly not found it [because I’ve never made that claim] in anything I’ve ever written) and others who comment on the newspaper’s website, and has never provided proof of his claims. (Ahem, the burden of proof lies with the person making the claim; it’s not on the readers of that claim to do the work. You’d think more people would understand that, but no, we live in a time where idiocy pays.)

So it should come as no surprise that so many distrust the president’s claims on so many things now, from his “hair” to his handling of the covid pandemic, to the Epstein files, and to the multiple “assassination” attempts. The story of the boy who cried wolf comes to mind for some reason …

For some it appears credibility doesn’t matter as long as you’re the right kind of partisan. Sigh. Credibility should always matter, regardless of partisan affiliation or non-affiliation. There are people across the political spectrum I would trust with my life (though most of those people are either dead or retired from political life now), and others I wouldn’t trust to hold on to my balloon while I pick up yon cat.

When I talk about the credibility gap, I’m talking about the lack of believability and trust created by contradictory official statements (sometimes within the same statement), as well as the gap between what one professes to believe in and what is actually practiced. (There’s also the satirical comedy team The Credibility Gap that included Harry Shearer and Michael McKean, among others, but we’re not talking about that.)

The term was first used widely during the Vietnam War era as a euphemism for political dishonesty, and who can blame the coiners, considering the wide range of untruths (Tet Offensive, etc.) that were told about the war. Arkansas’ U.S. Sen. J. William Fulbright is credited with popularizing the term in 1966, owing to not being able, he said, to get a straight answer about the war from the Lyndon B. Johnson administration. It was later applied to Richard Nixon’s handling of the war, and then Watergate.

Our current president’s history of “alternative facts” (even before he became president, he was known for stretching the truth about properties he owned, and for posing as his own publicist to inflate his worth to business publications or to flog his version of a controversy, among other things) makes his credibility gap very large for those who care about truth. For those who believe everything he says, well … reality eventually will re-assert itself, even with them.

The U.S. government’s credibility has suffered mightily in the last decade, perhaps most significantly with the covid pandemic in 2020, when once-trusted sources of knowledge on epidemics were undercut by the administration and far too many wild claims were amplified (no, a medication meant for parasitic infections in livestock is still not suitable for viral infections in humans). A too-wide swath of people still refuse to believe in the efficacy of vaccines, which has led to an upswing in diseases once considered eliminated in the U.S.

Add to that all the lies about things that aren’t even worth lying about (attendance at inauguration, anyone?) and those meant to instill distrust in our systems (the 2020 election was not stolen, people), and we have a real mess on our hands. How are we supposed to believe anything that anyone says anymore?

Maybe that’s the point.

If you spread distrust so far that no one believes anyone, why, you could probably get away with just about anything!

Regaining credibility (which any person of character should want to do) is hard, but worth it in the end as it rebuilds trust, whether in a person, company (like Apple or Johnson & Johnson, both of which bounced back from credibility crises) or government organization. The first thing needed is to take responsibility and own up to what was said and/or done without shifting the blame to others. Without that acknowledgement (the sooner the better) that harm was caused, and a sincere apology offered, nothing else really matters. After that, a shift in the culture should occur, making transparency, consistency and accountability the priority.

After that, it’s mostly putting in the time and the work to show that you can be trusted (such as showing your work when you make a claim), can consistently deliver what you’ve promised, are willing to be critical of yourself, and perhaps most importantly are willing to accept established limits on what you can and can’t do.

And maybe staying off social media in the wee hours would help as well. Heck, perhaps take a break from the Internet altogether, even if just for a day.

It might let some of us finally get some rest. Living in a state of constant trepidation isn’t good for anyone.