With the death of trust a nation dies. The failed trust for an amount as small as $1.99 or a trust as large as 40 trillion dollars is spiritually equal. When trust dies so do children. Today I heard of a CVS pharmacist who refused to hand over an asthma inhaler to a woman who was having an attack at the counter. All the insurance and prescription details were in order but the woman and her boyfriend only had a $20 bill and the medicine was $21.99. As the young woman collapsed the boyfriend gave the pharmacist his wallet and watch and his ring promising that it would only take a short while to look for more money in his car," please take these I will be right back" he said as the woman gasped for air on the floor. The pharmacist was adamant and said he would do no such thing. The boyfriend called 9-11 for paramedics and when they arrived she was given a life saving epi shot and a paramedic lent the $1.99 so an inhaler could be purchased. It was a matter of failed trust that nearly took this woman's life.

What is taking the life of my nation is a massive loss of trust in the banks, the financial rating companies, the SEC watchdogs, the justice department and the ceaseless greed in which even having everything is not enough. Today Mr. Mozzillo the CEO of Countrywide Mortgage and Loan accepted a fine instead of facing civil fraud in which over a million people lost sums collectively over many billions of dollars due to his insider trading and fraud crimes. He paid $67.3 million dollars and walked away keeping twice that fortune for himself. In fact not one financier has gone to jail over this world wide credit default swap gambling losses and bundled mortgage scam losses.   Who can trust the Justice Department in their response to Wall St. crimes at this point.

I was always impressed by the bold simple words of FDR when he said "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself". Today it seems small and maudlin to the truth of the only thing a nation has to breathe which is trust itself. When trust grows thin and disappears, the body of our nation suffocates to death.   It was in the second year of the Bush administration when I saw trust suffer a seizure of abject fear and a coughing fit of seething hatred. When the urge for revenge and a son's urge to settle a score that his father had not we were asked to believe that if you are not with us, you are against us. With every line drawn and every fenced freedom zone erected the remaining supply of trust was halved.
Neighbors that could chat on the sidewalk redefined relationships by with or against issues. One neighbor of mine whom I used to joke with regarding the whole concept of political extremists one day saw a cartoon I did of Rush Limbaugh. His face literally went ashen. It was as if I had made a cartoon of Mohammed and shown it to a Muslim Cleric. In weeks to come he notified the election board that I did not reside at my address so I was refused the right to vote when I arrived at the polls. I don't know whether there was any connect but two months later my website of cartoons poems and an illustrated book I was working on for seven years disappeared from the web. My trust suffered a near fatal blow.

We all cheered for hope when Obama was elected. It seems to me that it wasn't for a nebulous ill defined hope that we cheered for, it was for trust.   All this week banks are in the news for robo signing and processing phony affidavits to foreclose on hundreds of thousands of homes a month. May of the mortgages they were trying to process in a hurry were bundled and sold to other firms and investors. The banks did not hold the note for the homes that were seriously past due up to 20 months late. Yet they are trying to claim ownership to property they cannot prove is theirs by rushing to foreclosure and presenting fraudulent forgeries of loan agreements to judges.

Everywhere I look I see the effects of dead trust rotting relationships. The man across the street saw a four year old child come out his front door and jump into a hot car in the sun with the windows up. Twelve seconds later he watched the father come out the front door, car keys in hand, looking for his son. The boy was too small to be seen while standing just a few steps from the car. The father realizing his worst fears rushed to swimming pool but with mixed feeling he did not find the boy. The dad wnet back inside and searched the house. All this time the neighbor watched andat this point pretended to rake the same grass beside the end of his driveway. The father was now extremely upset and ran to the ends of the sidewalk and looked as far as he could for his son at which point he looked under and in the car and found his 4 year old son in the sweltering hot car baked by the August sun. The neighbor averted his eyes and walked away rake in hand. There was no difference between these two men except that of religion. They both had a family member named Sarah, they had the same number of children, they both were involved with music, the universal language. Yet there was not enough trust between them to save the life of a child.
As in the aftershock of a civil war, people need to extend a hand. Today it seems more people are investing time and effort to create a new civil war.

Tell me how to regain trust between us, between our nation and others. I need to know. The most fundamental Christians I know are not turning cheeks or loving their neighbors very well. Instead they are pursuing a path to shut down the government, as though it is the government itself that is the tyrannical beast from hell that is stealing their crops and money.
We can't breathe. The only thing a nation has to breathe is trust itself. I don't want hope. I want to breathe, but there isn't even a $1.99 worth of trust left to take one last breath.