I can remember being in a funky diner in a shady neighborhood in a rough part of a small town. The parking lot had deep puddles. I sat at the counter. A waitress in a tired apron and week-old hair put the cup of coffee I’d ordered in front of me. I took a sip. It wasn’t a bad cup of coffee. I drank it, paid, and went on about my business. That insignificant moment in my life popped up recently on my screen alongside the word “trust” while reading the news. It made me think about what a huge role trust plays in our lives, and how we don’t even think about it most of the time. I didn’t think about it when I drank that cup of coffee. I just subconsciously assumed the cup and the spoon had been properly washed, that the waitress kept her hands relatively clean, and that rats hadn’t been rooting around in the coffee. In fact, I recall that cup of coffee had gone down just fine, with no surprises or side effects. 

Forgetting that assumptions are a major cause of disappointments, we Americans trust so many ways every day. When a driver signals a left turn, we pull right, around him, trusting (assuming) the driver will in fact turn left. At a 4-way stop, we trust the driver who came in after us will wait until we proceed. We drink the water out of the tap because we trust it and the pipes it travels through in its journey to our house are safe. We drive through fast food lanes and consume what we find in the bag they hand us because we trust the place meets sanitation standards. We casually initial legal documents at the doctor’s office (or on line!) without reading them because we trust they are fair. Who can understand that legalese anyway? We trust a stranger in a white nurse’s jacket at Walmart to inject us in the arm with a Covid vaccination, assuming the needle is sterile, the serum is valid, and that the person brandishing the needle is really a nurse who has been properly trained. Think about it: it’s a long list of blind trust we practice every day. 

Our tendency for trusting has been certified – like it or not — with the slogan on our money announcing our trust in the Lord. The law written to have “In God we trust” printed on our paper currency was only passed in 1955. That declaration reveals our predilections, or so it must have appeared to President Dwight Eisenhower, who signed Public Law 84-140 into effect. After that wholesale declaration to an occult, metaphysical entity, where the assignment of trust is concerned the sky became the limit. 

Most of us, and it had become more and more inclusive, have been trusting with reason. We have usually received what we’ve been promised, or believed it was attainable. For years we have felt, in the main, generally secure, comfortable as we have obeyed stop signs, maintained faith in our banks, our weather radar, our Constitution, gravity, and GPS, in concert with the majority of our fellow citizens.  

It’s tempting to conclude that the harsh, authoritarian pronouncements of the current administration have reduced a long tradition of trust to a cipher, given the group of unqualified loyalists who have been selected to carry out a long list of harsh orders that are radically changing our country. Trust is not a valid response to the callous, drastic behavior of some senior officials. Gross incompetence, like using a commercial communications app for the exchange of highly confidential military attack plans, then falsely denying the material exchanged was secret, does not build confidence. Even what we have long believed to be proven facts have been challenged, creating groups of “facts” labeled variously “yours,” “mine,” and “theirs.” Opinions, maybe. Psychological manipulation, for sure. 

With its escalating and ever more blatant money-grubbing scams, Social Media must share some of the blame for undercutting our willingness to trust. A recent film, The Beekeeper, creates a chilling scenario on cold calls one might receive promoting deals that are, in fact, too good to be true. Seduced by the smooth proposal of the movie’s fictional financial scamming operation, a lonely older woman gives out too much information and loses her entire savings. The film’s story is about the violent revenge carried out by an angry beekeeper who is the marked woman’s tenant. Perhaps our being less eager to trust isn’t all bad, given where our open, “data-based,” factually challenged culture is going. As President Ronald Reagan once cautioned, “Trust. But verify.”

Trust has always promoted opportunity for scammers. Even back a hundred years the Brooklyn Bridge got sold several times to buyers whose greed perverted their trust. One proud “purchaser” had to be stopped from building toll booths on the bridge he thought he’d bought. 

In many ways, trust determines the future. We make decisions based on potential outcomes that are based on trust. We take our prescribed medications because we trust our doctor, because we trust the pharmacist who prepares and dispenses them. Trust is based on satisfaction, one reason it can be dangerously seductive. “Trust me,” we are often told. That’s become such a cliché it’s a standard sarcastic laugh line for comedians, and an opportunity for would-be scammers of all stripes. When to decide not to trust something (or someone) varies from person to person, but usually more than one disappointment is enough to cancel trust.

There don’t seem to be any polls that assess our nation’s current levels of trust; polls reflecting how we are all feeling about trust in general these days. Are we still as willing to trust our neighbors, our co-workers, our policemen, our local politicians, and our national government as we were a few years ago? 

One thing demonstrably provable about Donald Trump is his constant willingness to flat-out lie. Presidential lying has a long history in the United States, but the accumulation of Trump’s lies is record-setting, way beyond all existing literature. Transparent as most of his lies are, they provided a media-rich strategy of confusion that gained enough attention to win him the presidency. To mention just a few of his lies, he actually said our government had spent $100 million on condoms for Hamas; he said immigrants were stealing pet cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio and eating them; he said Ukraine started the war against Russia; he said the USA is the only country with birthright citizenship; he said Canadians were enthusiastic about becoming America’s 51st state; he said China was operating the Panama Canal. None of those statements are true. All of those statements are demonstrably, unquestionably false. 

The same basic strategy is being practiced overseas. As columnist David French (a Republican turned Independent) points out in the New York Times, the Trump administration has abruptly revoked America’s contracts funding malaria prevention, polio vaccine initiatives, tuberculosis treatments, Ebola surveillance, and hospitals in refugee camps. “Will any sensible world power now rely on America’s word–or on America itself?” French asks. “Lying destroys trust,” he writes. “And trust, once destroyed, is the most difficult thing to restore.”

One has to wonder how Americans’ collective tendency to trust will fare over the next four years. Celebrities are influencers. Celebrities’ styles trickle down into the population. America’s primary celebrity is whomever is President, meaning the current President’s style can have significant influence. Hats are a simple example. President Harry Truman wore hats, therefore hats became fashionable for men. Jack Kennedy did not wear hats. Hats were not in fashion during Kennedy’s administration. 

Given the current administration’s reliance on deception, lying could become elevated to our national pastime. “Trust me,” uttered with a confident smile and a casual tug at one’s mustache, could become America’s new marketing slogan. 

Roger Vaughan, a Massachusetts native, began writing, photographing, playing music, and sailing at a young age, pursuits that shaped his lifelong career. After earning a BA in English from Brown University, he worked as an editor and writer for Saturday Evening Post and Life magazines, covering major cultural events of the 1960s and 70s. His first book, The Grand Gesture (1973), launched a prolific freelance writing career. He’s written more than 20 books, including numerous biographies, films, and many videos. Since 1980, Vaughan has lived on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, where he continues his work documenting remarkable individuals and events.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve read a ton of thoughtful analysis about the American Horror Show going on in Washington. No matter what side you’re on, both the quantity and the quality of the news could not be more exhausting, or confusing.                     

Even if you voted for Trump, even if you think Putin had a right to invade Ukraine, the boorish way President Zelensky of Ukraine was bullied in the Oval Office was shocking. As was the attack on Canada. As was the destruction of the Black Lives Matter plaza in Washington. It’s a long, disturbing list. David Brooks, a Republican, wrote in the NYTimes recently, “The Europeans have realized that America, the nation they thought was their friend, is actually a rogue superpower. . .This is not just a Trump problem; America’s whole reputation is shot.”

Maybe you agree with the US joining Russia, Israel, North Korea, Sudan, Belarus, Hungary and 11 other similarly oppressive regimes voting in the United Nations against supporting Ukraine (96 nations voted for supporting Ukraine). Many saw the US vote as a shift away from our country’s support of freedom, away from America’s commitment to Democracy. In any case, the potential collateral damage of such a 180-degree turnaround by the United States has to have created some general anxiety for all of us. And the possibility of how life might be altered for the worse without the vaccinations we’ve enjoyed against various communicable diseases must create a common concern, at least.

We are deep into a colossal, fundamental change. As David French, a Republican who became an Independent in 2018, wrote in the NYTimes (2-25):

“American elections could reset our national security strategy, but they did not change our bedrock alliances. They did not change our fundamental identity. Both parties were committed to NATO. Both parties saw the Soviet Union as the grave national security threat it was…Our voters may indeed choose a leader who will abandon our traditional alliances and actively support one of the world’s most dangerous and oppressive regimes.”

In a short eight weeks of the Trump Presidency, that has come to pass. David French thinks the slew of on-again, off-again policies being dictated puts us in peril. Disagree or not, we’re faced with living in a new “American normal” in which our administration’s attitude toward the rest of the world has become radically isolationist, with a hard-right, authoritarian turn. The flurry of executive orders being dispatched are demonstrably in line with how other dictatorships operate. And the administration’s attitude toward many of its own citizens — mainly non-whites along with LGBTQIA+ — the plus in this case standing for disabled, has become blatantly oppressive; dismissive. Even the future of free speech is on the table.

What I don’t read is any good advice about how we should all deal with this upsetting, cataclysmic turnabout without losing our minds. It’s all-consuming, as if we had awakened one morning to find all the trees had been felled while we slept. We can’t ignore it, or pretend it isn’t happening. This is no time to decide to stop reading the news and redefine oneself as apolitical. As New Yorker editor David Remick wrote in the 3/10/25 issue, “To minimize the unending fusillade of Trump’s first weeks in office, to choose to turn away, to shut off the news, is to indulge in self-soothing.” Supporting a Democracy means keeping up, participating even in some simple way. 

But it is a good idea to limit one’s intake of the news, just as one limits the number of drinks one has at the bar, or miles run on that treadmill after work. Moderation has always been a key to survival. What we’re after is a crutch, something to help us maintain a balance so we don’t fall on our faces. For me it’s humor. 

It happens laughter is good for us. There are many books celebrating humor’s therapeutic value. Notable among them is Anatomy of an Illness, journalist Norman Cousins’ story of how a daily dose of laughter helped him overcome a rare, debilitating disease. Humor is a large arena. And luckily, laughter is an innate human response. Everyone has a funny bone that gets tickled in a variety of ways, from ruefully to sillily to outrageously to black. 

Many comedians have kept me laughing over the past years: Lenny Bruce, Johnny Carson, Bob Newhart, Bill Murray, Tim Minchin, Robin Williams, Judy Tenuta, George Carlin, Steve Martin, Jerry Seinfeld, and Eddie Murphy to name a few. And Richard Pryor, maybe the most talented of them all. 

Save racing in the Tour de France, or being a classical music soloist, there can’t be anything more difficult to pull off than standup comedy. Good or bad, we needy patrons have to admire any persons brave enough to expose their very souls to a public microphone. Just oneself on stage trying to make people laugh armed with nothing more than a few routines and a clever presentation has to be one of the loneliest gigs there is. 

The current group of standups, while small, is larger than it used to be. It can start with Chris Rock, a well-established star who has been around for a while. You might recall him getting famously slapped by Will Smith at the 2022 Oscars after Rock made Smith’s wife the subject of a joke. Smith must not have understood that everything – everyone – is grist for the standup’s mill. Truly equal opportunity. Rock is the one who told us he’d had more contact with his parents in the 16 years of the cell phone than in the previous 40 years. Standups often insert insights like that into their act, items that aren’t particularly funny, but that reveal unique perspectives. 

As a group, standup comedians are smart, clever. The culture, the news, every day events, everything from the sublime (“Guns should be banned. We should ban certain people from buying them.” Pause. “Like men.” – Emily Catalano) to the ridiculous (“I’m dating the Pope. I’m just using him to get to God.” – Judy Tenuta) is their raw material. They know it all cold, and take it apart it from every possible angle. For them it’s the news, all the news, all the rumors and then some run through their humor filters.

Dave Chappelle is another well-established star. His comedy sketch show in the early 2000s was very racial and also hilarious.  Features about the “Niggas” family, and Clayton Bigsby, the world’s only Black White Supremacist, were two of the Chappelle Show’s regulars. His powerful, hour-long standup shows since then have been unique for their off-hand, conversational presentation and their “serious,” often controversial humor. His punch lines are aptly named. Perhaps more than any of his contemporaries, Chappelle enjoys probing the raw roots of issues. In one routine when he imagines buying a gun, he says the clerk put two boxes of shells on the counter. One had a picture of a duck on it. The other had a picture of a deer on it. Which do you want, the clerk asked him. “I want the one with a picture of a white dude trespassing on it,” Chappelle said. 

In a much-admired monologue on SNL before Trump was sworn in, Chappelle got serious. He said he knew Trump would be watching as he followed a true story he related about President Jimmy Carter walking bravely through dangerous Palestinian streets, with this: “The Presidency is no place for petty people. Whether or not they voted for you, people are counting on you. Do better next time. Have empathy for displaced people.”

Trump evidently wasn’t watching.

The British standup, Ricky Gervais, is another gritty performer. Like Chappelle, Gervais is able to integrate spontaneously and unpredictably with his audience while often taking it slightly beyond most of their limits. Once he spoke of a friend’s aunt dying of Alzheimer’s. “How do you die of Alzheimer’s? She forgot to live.” Gervais reassures us about our blackest amusing thoughts: “You can’t choose your sense of humor. It’s involuntary. But that’s what humor is for, to laugh at the bad shit.” 

He goes on to say a fellow comedian once tried to criticize him by saying he was funny as a fart at a baby’s funeral. Gervais found the comment hilarious. “Imagine, a big echoey church,” he said, “everyone sobbing, and someone farts. You’d laugh, even if it were your baby.” 

Late night hosts have to be included because thanks to Johnny Carson’s formula, they open their shows with a standup monolog. While whomever is President is fair game for all of them, no one has gone after Trump with the sustained tenacity of Jimmy Kimmel. Call it a feud. Kimmel recently said he had set his clock ahead four years, but it hadn’t worked. And over a video clip of Elon Musk shown returning from a weekend at Mar-a-Largo, Kimmel said Trump’s current enforcer was “dressed like the first person to be eliminated from the World Series of Poker. Trump called Kimmel “The worst host in the history of the Academy Awards.” Kimmel read the quote on air. 

The number of those trying standup comedy has increased, perhaps because with climate chaos, over population, and the proliferation of political absurdity, there has never been so much raw material available for humorous treatment. Social media has made it easier to get noticed. 

The new crop of standups includes many women, a welcome addition to the art. The women tend to stick with subjects like men, dating, relationships, marriage, femininity, and fashion rather than politics. After the late accordion-wielding pioneer, Judy Tenuta (“I like to hunt. . .I like to wear safety orange”), Amy Schumer was one of the first women on the standup scene, and one of the nastiest. Shock is her game. Sex at its raunchiest is often her subject of choice. She’s in your face, challenging, aggressive. At one of her tamer moments, Schumer said, “First it was big boobs, then it was big butts. What’s next, scoliosis?” 

An engaging female standup in the crowd is Emily Catalano, a quiet-spoken, poker-faced woman in her 30s. She looks slightly uncomfortable on stage, like an elementary school teacher on a field trip, wearing versions of a basic brown stocking cap pulled over straggly braids, and a hoody. Her calm, wide-set eyes cooly sweep her audience behind round, horn-rimmed glasses. Her soft delivery is almost a monotone. She presents a sympathetic character.

“The hardest part about being a Christian,” Emily says, “is being better than everybody else.” Or: “The only time there was sex talk in my house growing up was when our pastor had an affair.” Or: “A fellow comedian asked me why I don’t have jokes about my lazy eye.” Long pause. “That’s how I found out I had a lazy eye.” Or: “I got divorced in California. It takes six months there before it’s final. I wonder why. Maybe it’s in case your ex gets a job.” Or: “I was an atheist. I changed to agnostic so people would like me.” Or: “My boyfriend wants me to be his mom. That’s not me. I’m his dad. Because I’m gonna leave him.” Or: “We lost. I hate losing. To that guy. We lost to a guy with brain damage.”

Then there’s Jim Jeffries, a UK native who has made a big success for himself in America with sell out shows in several major cities. Jeffries can’t resist joking about our politics. Like all standups, he loves Donald Trump for the constant flow of material Trump provides. “He’s fun, you know.” Jeffries says. “He’s like a high school kid running for class president walking around saying `We’re gonna have two lunches, and a soda machine in every classroom!’ That’s all good fun. But then there’s not fun. He prays on fear, the Mexicans coming over and raping.”

Jeffries fixes on Trump’s intention to list all Muslims living in the USA on a register: “Imagine you’re a 16-year-old Muslim kid who’s lived here all his life, who thinks he is an American, and now he’s being told he’s not welcome, he’s being put on a register. How quickly could that kid be radicalized now?

“[Trump’s] trying to defeat hate with hate and only making more hate,” Jeffries said in his Freedumb Netflix special eight years ago. “Only love can beat hate.” It doesn’t always work, Jeffries admits, but he suggests finding a person who you hate and who hates you and showing them nothing but love. “That person will still probably hate you, but one thing will happen: eventually everyone will see them as the asshole.”

Humor. You wouldn’t hear that on the evening news.

Roger Vaughan, a Massachusetts native, began writing, photographing, playing music, and sailing at a young age, pursuits that shaped his lifelong career. After earning a BA in English from Brown University, he worked as an editor and writer for Saturday Evening Post and Life magazines, covering major cultural events of the 1960s and 70s. His first book, The Grand Gesture (1973), launched a prolific freelance writing career. He’s written more than 20 books, including numerous biographies, films, and many videos. Since 1980, Vaughan has lived on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, where he continues his work documenting remarkable individuals and events.