Last night, the President of the United States stood before Congress for nearly two hours and showed us exactly what America’s love and trust crisis looks like.
He called Democratic lawmakers “crazy.” He accused them of cheating. He pointed at half the chamber with contempt. Members of Congress shouted back. One was escorted out for holding a sign that read “Black People Aren’t Apes”—a reference to a video the President himself posted depicting the Obamas as primates. Democrats walked out. Republicans roared. The longest State of the Union in modern history became a spectacle of mutual degradation in the very chamber where we are supposed to govern ourselves together as one people under God.
The President declared a “golden age of America.” Sadly, what we witnessed was a nation talking past itself, at itself, and against itself—for 108 minutes.
This is not normal. And it is not just politics. It is a crisis of love and trust that reaches from the floor of the House chamber to your dinner table, where millions of American families can no longer share a meal without fear of political eruption.
I believe there is a way through this crisis. Not a partisan way—a human one. I learned it from a boy in Zambia, two former soldiers in the Middle East, and fifty voters in New Hampshire. Let me explain.
In 1998, I was a public health physician in Zambia when I met a boy named Justin. We got to talking at a gas station, and I invited him and his friends to share a chicken dinner. During the meal, I noticed Justin quietly stashing pieces of chicken into his pants. When I asked him why, he looked up at me with eyes full of compassion: “I’m taking some food for my grandmother.”
Justin was caring for his grandmother and looking out for the younger boys around him. He was already a leader—generous, strategic, and guided by love. He recognized, without anyone teaching him, that his life was bound up with theirs. And he acted on that recognition with love and trust. That’s the whole argument of this essay in a single gesture.
I’ve carried Justin’s lesson for nearly three decades—through the global AIDS movement, through my ordination as a Song of Songs Rabbi, and now into the fight for American democracy. What he demonstrated that evening is a chain of truths that I believe can address this crisis—from our most intimate relationships all the way to the structures of self-governance. Let me lay it out.
1. We Are Interdependent—and Recognizing That Is the Key to Our Flourishing
Last night’s speech was built on the opposite premise. It was a performance of dominance, division, and score-settling—a vision of America where one side wins and the other side is “crazy.” That is the logical endpoint of a mythology we’ve been telling ourselves for 250 years: rugged individualism. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Every person for themselves. This story has real consequences—it trains us to see neighbors as competitors first and collaborators later, if ever.
This tragic mythology doesn’t match reality. Your safety depends on people you’ll never meet. Your food depends on workers worldwide. Your children’s future is shaped by decisions made across this country and around the globe. No human being has ever been truly independent, and no nation has either.
Recognizing our interdependence is not a feel-good slogan. It is central to our individual and collective well-being and flourishing. When we deny it, we fragment. When we organize around it, extraordinary things become possible.
During the global AIDS crisis, a global solidarity movement brought together people with HIV/AIDS, conservative and liberal politicians, physicians, faith leaders, and pharmaceutical executives—into rooms full of conflict and competing interests. We aligned on the truth of our interdependence, with a focus on saving lives and caring for children, and over two decades we mobilized over $120 billion, saving 70 million lives and providing care for 7 million orphans.
Interdependence is not weakness. It is the foundation of every great human achievement. And in 2026—as we mark America’s 250th anniversary—we will decide whether this milestone becomes a moment of renewal or a marker of how far we’ve fallen apart. After last night, the love and trust crisis is undeniable, and the stakes could not be higher.
2. We Experience Interdependence as Love and Trust
If interdependence is the underlying reality, love and trust are how we actually feel it. Justin didn’t give me a lecture on interdependence—he showed me what it looks like. He cared for his grandmother. He looked out for the younger boys. That instinct to care for one another, to depend on one another, is what love and trust feel like in practice.
This is true in families, in friendships, and in communities. When we recognize that your well-being is bound up with mine, something shifts in how we relate. We move from transaction to relationship. From suspicion to care. That felt experience—of being genuinely connected to another person’s fate—is love and trust.
And right now, America is in the grip of a love and trust crisis. Last night made it impossible to ignore. A president who dehumanizes former leaders as apes and calls elected representatives “crazy” is not governing—he is destroying the connective tissue of a democracy.
Let me be clear: the crisis is not only his. It belongs to all of us. Families are fracturing over politics—people dread their own dinner tables. In just the first half of 2025, there were 150 politically motivated attacks in the United States—nearly double the previous year. We have lost the lived experience of our interdependence, and the crisis is spreading from our kitchen tables to our Capitol.
3. Peace Is the Presence of Love and Trust—Strong Enough to Hold Both Pain and Hope
The fight for AIDS funding took its toll on me. I was an angry activist, willing to destroy relationships to reach our goals. That anger strained my family, my friendships, and my own spirit. I didn’t like who I was becoming. It took years—and eventually my ordination as a Song of Songs Rabbi—to find a different path: serving with love rather than anger.
I confess: watching last night’s speech, I felt that old anger rising. The dehumanizing language. The contempt. The racism. Every instinct in me wanted to fight fire with fire. Fortunately, I’ve learned—painfully—that anger without love just produces more of what we saw on that House floor: people screaming past each other, each side more entrenched than before.
Then I remembered Magen and Ahmed. Six weeks after October 7th reignited war in the Middle East, I watched these former soldiers calling for peace together: Magen, a former Israeli soldier whose parents were murdered that day, and Ahmed, a former Palestinian combatant who had fifty relatives murdered in the retaliation that followed. When Ahmed asked whether he should leave their peace group—given that some of its members may have killed his family—the silence was unbearable. Then he whispered: “No. Our peace mission together is bigger than my anger.”
That moment crystallized the third link in the chain. Peace is not the absence of conflict. Peace is the presence of love and trust strong enough to hold both pain and hope at the same time. Magen and Ahmed didn’t resolve their grief. They held it—together. That is what peace actually looks like. And peace is a verb—it demands ongoing, active work. It demands a practice.
If America’s crisis is a crisis of love and trust, then what we need are tools to restore them. I began to imagine a “peace bell” ringing in my mind—calling me back, again and again, to that active work. I call the work peacecrafting.
4. Peacecrafting: Four Practices to Restore Love and Trust—Starting at Your Own Table
Peacecrafting begins where the crisis hits first: in your own relationships. Not in the House chamber—at your dinner table, in your workplace, in the conversations you’re dreading. It provides four interdependence practices that anyone can use—each one a reason for the peace bell to ring:
Listen as a Friend. I ask myself: WAIT—Why Am I Talking? That pause creates space. Instead of preparing my rebuttal, I look at the other person as a friend on a soul journey.
Embrace Multiple Perspectives. Love holds more than one truth. It allows for disagreement without demanding immediate resolution. Magen and Ahmed showed me this is possible even in the most extreme circumstances.
Speak with Love. Our words can build connection or destroy safety. Love speech doesn’t mean avoiding conflict—it means being honest and kind, direct and respectful, simultaneously. It is the opposite of what we witnessed last night.
Build Trust. When we listen as friends, hold multiple perspectives, and speak with love, something shifts. We begin to recognize a piece of our own story in the other person. That recognition is the seed of trust.
These four practices create a virtuous cycle—interdependence in action. Let me show you what it looks like. I’m in a meeting with my colleague Mary, debating how to allocate limited resources for a community project, and I catch myself saying, “Your analysis completely misses the fundamental problem...” My peace bell rings. She’s not my enemy. My language is sharp. I take a breath: “Help me understand, Mary—when you say this, how do you account for that?” Attack becomes inquiry. Defensiveness becomes dialogue.
It turns out Mary and I have completely different views on where the money should go. I get impatient. My peace bell rings again: Embrace Multiple Perspectives. I listen—curious, open. I learn new things. Now I’m holding two truths: we completely disagree, AND I embrace her perspectives. The message to Mary is: your story matters to mine. We are interdependent. And that builds trust.
Imagine if even one person on that House floor last night had a peace bell ringing.
5. From the Dinner Table to Our Democracy: Collective Peacecrafting Through Citizens’ Assemblies
Here is where peacecrafting scales from the dinner table to our democracy. If these practices can restore love and trust between two people, can they work for a whole society? I believe they can—when individual practices are embedded in collective structures designed for exactly this purpose.
In 2024, New Hampshire hosted America’s first statewide Citizens’ Assembly. Imagine, fifty residents—progressives, conservatives, independents—spent a weekend together working on election system reforms. Early on, a progressive activist said, “I feel locked out of democracy.” Twenty minutes later, a conservative voter said the exact same thing.
Their peace bells rang.
When they heard their shared fears, they became listening friends. They embraced multiple perspectives on redistricting and voter access. They practiced love speech—no attacking, only clarifying questions. Trust began to build as everyone recognized a piece of their own story in someone across the political divide.
By the end, the New Hampshire Citizens’ Assembly reached 80 percent consensus on key election reforms, which are now moving through the state legislature with cross-partisan support.
Compare that to what we saw last night: 108 minutes, zero consensus, deeper wounds.
This is not utopian thinking. This is what happens when we design democratic structures around the truth of our interdependence.
In Citizens’ Assemblies, interdependence is the operating system, and love and trust are the cognitive fuel of democracy. When people feel respected, it changes their brain chemistry—it keeps them at the table through conflict, opens their minds, and makes collaboration possible. This is how the love and trust crisis gets resolved—not just in our living rooms, but in our legislatures.
What if we established Citizens’ Assemblies in all fifty states? What if we convened a National Citizens’ Assembly to refresh the U.S. Constitution around the truth of our interdependence? Wouldn’t that be a peaceful revolution—actually working together to create a government of, by, and for all of the people?
After last night, we need that revolution more than ever.
Here’s What I’m Asking You to Explore
America’s love and trust crisis is real. Last night put it on national television for 108 minutes. But it is not inevitable. I’m asking you to explore your beliefs on five things, and each one depends on the one before it:
- That we are interdependent—and that recognizing this is essential to our flourishing.
- That we experience interdependence as love and trust in our relationships.
- That peace is the presence of love and trust strong enough to hold both pain and hope.
- That peacecrafting—four simple practices—can restore love and trust at your dinner table, in your workplace, in any relationship.
- And that collective peacecrafting through Citizens’ Assemblies can restore trust in our politics and fulfill the promise of democracy.
If you believe even the first link, the rest follows. And if the full chain holds, then what we need to resolve this crisis isn’t a miracle. It’s a practice.
Start Where You Are
You don’t need to wait for a Citizens’ Assembly to begin resolving this crisis. You don’t need to wait for a different president. Start where the crisis starts—at your own table. Next time you’re in a tense conversation—at dinner, in a meeting, online, in the wreckage of last night’s political despair—try this:
- Listen as a friend. Ask yourself: Why am I talking?
- Embrace multiple perspectives. Love holds more than one truth.
- Speak with love to build trust.
Use peacecrafting once, and you can restore love and trust in a moment. Use it consistently, and you can transform a relationship. Use it together, and we can restore trust from our dinner tables all the way to our democracy.
We are all that boy Justin, instinctively caring for others. We are all his grandmother, held up by someone else’s love. I can still see Justin looking up at me, chicken tucked into his pants, eyes full of compassion. He had already set a place at the table for his grandmother.
Last night, the President of the United States set a table of contempt. The question for the rest of us—for all of America in its 250th year—is which table we choose to sit at, and whether we’re ready to pull up a chair at an interdependence table for everyone.
Peace.
Dr. Paul Zeitz is the Co-Founder of #unifyUSA, an inter-partisan citizens' movement dedicated to Hit Refresh the U.S. Constitution through Citizens’ Assemblies and author of Hit Refresh on the U.S. Constitution: A Revolutionary Roadmap for Fulfilling on the Promise of Democracy and Revolutionary Optimism: 7 Steps for Living as a Love-Centered Activist.
America’s Love and Trust Crisis was originally published by Dr. Paul Zeitz’s Substack and is republished with permission.
