Government needs to be more transparent
Some Americans are already skeptical of every word they hear from Washington, D.C. To me this begs the question of whether we will ever trust our government if it is unwilling to tell us the truth.
Just look back to the assassination of an ambassador in Benghazi. While it was initially reported that this attack was caused by a video on YouTube, yet the American people soon found out the attack had nothing to do with the video. Refer to 2001 and 2002 after 9/11; in the buildup to the war in Iraq, the government told the citizenry that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. But this too turned out to be false, and years later we are still fighting a war over WMDs that were never found.
It’s unfortunate these kinds of lies are becoming all too common in America’s political landscape. It damages the credibility of the government, especially for the next time a crisis occurs. However, this lack of transparency from the government also makes it harder for politicians on both sides of the political spectrum to come together and compromise.
Our political system is in sore need of a transparency makeover. If the government wants the full trust of the public again, they need to start by answering the media’s questions truthfully and recognizing that the truth always eventually surfaces.
A country that does not trust its public officials will be stuck in constant bickering, and arguing impedes progress and innovation. The Dalai Lama summed it up best when he said, “A lack of transparency results in distrust and a deep sense of insecurity.”
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