DAVID MARCUS: With an FBI Americans can’t trust, conspiracy theories are booming business.
On New Year's Day, two deadly tragedies struck, one in New Orleans and one in Las Vegas, and while the two events are very different, the wake of both displays the deficit in trust that Americans feel in our most important institutions.
On Bourbon Street, a terrorist born and raised in the United States plowed a pickup truck into a festive crowd, killing 14 in the process, all in the name of ISIS, or so we are given to understand.
Outside the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas, a lone Army Green Beret took his own life, blowing up the Tesla Cybertruck he had rented just days before.
Much like the response to the drone sightings in New Jersey last month, the FBI’s response to these events has been slow, vague, and has opened the door to a myriad of conspiracy theories.
In New Orleans, for example, the FBI’s initial reaction was to tell the American people that it was not an act of terrorism, presumably for reasons of political correctness. This is the same impulse that leads feckless headline writers to passively publish that "a truck slammed into a crowd," instead of "a terrorist committed mass murder."
This is also the same FBI which has absurdly insisted for years that conservative white men are the greatest terror threat facing America, and apparently as the feds run around chasing this supposed white supremacist whale, actual Islamic terrorists are simply lost in the mix.
Meanwhile, there are conspiracy theories about the event being a false flag operation funded by Israel, or other silliness, as we wait, and wait, and wait for more information from federal law enforcement.
Likewise, in Vegas, where, thankfully the soldier who ended his life in a cultural spectacle that drew in both President-elect Trump and the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, did not kill anyone else, even more bizarre conspiracy theories abound.
Rumors are bouncing around the internet that this troubled military man had secret knowledge about space age propulsion systems in China or some such nonsense. The fact that he made Trump and Musk central to the drama is only adding fuel to the metaphorical fire.
There was a time when Americans really did trust what the FBI told them, or the summary of events proffered by news outlets. But today, it feels as if we are always waiting for the other shoe to drop, to be told the real story, not the politically correct version.
If the bureau laments its diminished image, it can thank its own history of spying on Trump, targeting Catholics and parents who try to hold their children's schools accountable, and slavish devotion to diversity, equity and inclusion at the expense of truth and merit.
Hopefully, with the confirmation of Kash Patel as FBI director, this troubling trend can begin to change and we the people can believe again that we are being told the truth, without any woke varnish.
But make no mistake, this will be no easy task for Patel. For a quarter-century now, the FBI has often seemed more concerned with social justice than solving crimes. That won’t change overnight.
Neither will our gutless news media turn on a dime, back in the direction of "just the facts," and away from the suffocating and constant "meaningful context" they provide to suggest black is white and up is down.
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But, as the saying goes, the first step in solving a problem is admitting that you have one, and as the election of Trump, and likely confirmation of Patel attests to, Americans damn well know what the problem is.
A bond of trust has been abused, something of value, the very ability of Americans to believe what their government and media tell them, has been lost.
This week, outgoing White House Press Secretary and serial liar Karine Jean-Pierre posted a photo of her staff, calling the menagerie of Millennial ne'er do wells "the best in the business."
It was a perfect distillation of how far both the state and media have fallen. The best in the business? At what? Deceiving the American people? They couldn’t even manage to do that properly.
Trust is something that can disappear in the blink of an eye. It is also something that can take a lifetime to rebuild once lost.
Maybe the most important thing the Trump administration can do, starting in two weeks, is to begin the process of restoring that trust, because without it, no representative democracy can survive and flourish.