Trust America's best chance

Pete Buttigieg, 1982-

Book - 2020

"In Trust, Pete Buttigieg demonstrates how trust will be essential in order to face the unique challenges of the decades ahead. Trust is essential to the foundation of America's democracy, asserts Pete Buttigieg, the former presidential candidate and South Bend mayor. Yet, in a century warped by terrorism, financial collapse, Trumpist populism, systemic racism, and now a global pandemic, trust has been squandered, sacrificed, abused, stolen, or never properly built in the first place. And now, more so than ever before, Americans must work side by side to reckon with the monumental challenges posed by our present moment. Interweaving history, political philosophy, and affecting passages of memoir, Buttigieg explores the strong rela...tionship between measures of prosperity and levels of social trust. He provides an impassioned account of a threefold crisis of trust: in our institutions, in each other, and in the American project itself. Today, these perilous patterns of distrust have wreaked havoc on nearly every sector of society, as Americans increasingly resent the very government that needs to be part of the solution. With the internet and partisan television networks acting as accelerants, Americans jettison any sense of shared reality, lose confidence in experts and scientists, and cope with the grim national tragedy of a pandemic that has only further exemplified the lethality of distrust. Buttigieg contends that our success, or failure, at confronting the greatest challenges of the decade-racial and economic justice, pandemic resilience, and climate action-will rest on whether we can effectively cultivate, deepen, and, where necessary, repair the networks of trust that are now endangered, or for so many, have never even existed. An urgent call to foster an "American way of trust" at this painfully polarized juncture in the nation's history, Trust is a direct reckoning with the prevailing corruption of social responsibility. Yet refusing to give in to the despair that threatens our foundations, Trust seeks to inspire Americans to build a powerful movement that will define all of us in the years to come"--

Saved in:

2nd Floor Show me where

320.513/Buttigieg
1 / 1 copies available
Location Call Number   Status
2nd Floor 320.513/Buttigieg Checked In
Subjects
Genres
Instructional and educational works
Published
New York : Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W. W. Norton & Company [2020]
Language
English
Main Author
Pete Buttigieg, 1982- (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
223 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 215-223).
ISBN
9781631498770
  • Introduction
  • Chapter 1. The Necessity of Trust
  • Chapter 2. The Loss of Trust
  • Chapter 3. Trust for a Deciding Decade
  • Chapter 4. Rebuilding Trust
  • Acknowledgments
  • Appendix 1. Trust and Distrust in America-A Report of the Pew Research Center
  • Appendix 2. Closing Address of the 2020 Pete Buttigieg Campaign for President
  • Notes
Review by Kirkus Book Review

The former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and Democratic presidential candidate explores how trust in our country's governmental foundations has drastically eroded over recent decades. With the monumental 2020 election looming, Buttigieg examines the fundamental issues compromising the integrity of our country's institutions and why we urgently need to take measures to rebuild confidence. The author begins with an informative overview on the "necessity of trust" and then moves on to a cogent account of how the U.S. got to this point. From a historical and philosophical perspective, he reflects on the Constitution and the framers' expansive intent for future generations. "They built into the system a way for it to become bigger than their own biases," he writes, "trusting their successors with the power to improve upon what they had created." Shedding some personal light, Buttigieg recounts a few memorable lessons he has learned during both his military and political career. For example, he shows how establishing trust was imperative to the success of his life-threatening duties as a military driver in Afghanistan. The author also gives plenty of attention to the gross injustices that have occurred under the Trump administration, many of which serve as cases in point for why our trust in government has eroded so much. "Presidents after the Trump era will need to return to the basics when it comes to trust and credibility," writes the author. "By 2020, each of the most important means available to the White House for building trust--transparency, responsibility, vulnerability, truth-telling, predictability, reciprocity--had been not just abandoned but torched." Ultimately, argues Buttigieg, we must seek to rebuild our reserves of trust and transparency; take actionable steps to secure a fairer tax code; and direct a more judicious eye toward our legal system regarding corruption and police misconduct. An eloquent call to action for socially conscious citizens to get involved in restoring essential networks of trust. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.