Past government abuse gives victims good reason for diffuse, unspecific distrust

Evidence

Consider a more extreme grounding for distrust in government. For an easy case, consider an individual who has been abused by government in the past, as were the subjects of the notorious Tuskegee experiments designed to watch the progress of syphilis in untreated black southern prisoners, or the subjects of supposedly harmless exposure to radiation in various experiments by U.S. government agencies to find out what effects such exposure might have (for the latter, see D’Antonio 1997, 41–42). Such an individual has good personal reason to be wary of distant government officials, indeed to distrust them in a relatively unspecific and vague way that might have no counterpart in trust. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 758

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Saramago’s premise: once witnessing government/institutional failures is impossible or the damage is done, diffuse distrust spreads. Also echoes the reader’s Luhmann/Hardin integration on how familiarity with abuse, not observation, grounds wariness. — connects to: Documented government abuses are extrapolated into boundless suspicion of state capacities — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 183