‘We’ve become a low-trust society’: Curley says Lindsey Graham death speculation reflects deeper American crisis

Following the death of U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, several questions arose over how he died, causing a major pool of speculation and misinformation online, pointing to the cause.

John Curley, host of “The John Curley Show” on KIRO Newsradio, noted that even though people were told Graham died in his home of heart disease, a vast majority of people won’t choose to believe it because of the years of lies that have led to a loss of trust in the government.

“We are told, nope, that didn’t happen. Every one of these stories, all the time, constantly, the conspiracy theories posted on social media get 14 times the shares of any other type of story,” Curley said. “The problem is, I don’t know how the government gets people’s trust back, and I don’t know how the media gets the trust back as well.”

Curley points to a dark chapter in history that explains the loss of trust

Curley told a story where 400 Black men contracted syphilis in the 1930s, and the government said it would give them drugs to remedy the disease. The men weren’t actually given anything at all, and the government just “sat there and watched them slowly die,” to see the effects of the disease. The government didn’t admit to what was done until 1972.

“At that point, 80% of black men, when asked, ‘Do you trust the government and do you trust medical institutions?’ They said no, which directly affected how many black men ended up going to the hospital or going to a doctor from the time this news was released,” Curley said. “It has serious effects on other people when the trust breaks down, and it’s been happening. You want to regain the trust of the American people, but that’s why people don’t believe the stuff that comes up.

“We’ve become a low-trust society,” he continued. “Everybody’s got a conspiracy theory. They’re all out there. How do you ever put the genie back in the bottle and start to regain trust? One way of doing it is to admit it. If the government on a whole bunch of stuff would come out and say, ‘Yep, we lied to you about this. Yep, the media. Yep, we screwed you over, and we did it intentionally.'”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

Listen to John Curley weekday afternoons from 3 – 7 p.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

Follow @https://twitter.com/jcurleyshow