Opinion: Don’t let politics fool you — Americans are honest

Every time this year’s presidential hopefuls open their mouths, fact-checkers start counting the lies — or, perhaps, “mistruths” is a gentler term. It’s a necessary part of any campaign analysis, but it can distort our view of society, in general. The average person might get the impression that America is the land of dishonesty.
Don’t believe it.
Once a year or so, I like to Google search terms related to honesty, just to see if Americans have still got it. So far, I’ve never been disappointed. Any simple search will uncover plenty of remarkable examples. Here are a few from my latest search:
In Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, last Sunday, a man who prefers to be known only as Skip happened to find $12,000 in cash in the parking lot of a local grocery store. According to the local Telegram & Gazette, the owner of the cash, Van Ha, didn’t realize she was missing the envelope with the cash until she got home from the store. She and her nephew made a frantic trip back, where the store manager reviewed surveillance video but could find no evidence of what happened to the missing envelope.
Ha and her nephew were leaving the store dejectedly when the manager discovered Skip standing at the service counter, anxious to turn in the money he had just found.
The nephew later wrote on social media: “It takes a special kind of person to do something so honest and selfless, and Skip, you are a true example of integrity and compassion. Thank you, Skip — you’ve touched more lives than you know today.”
Last December, Greg Thow won a football pool at a bar in Denver and collected his winnings, $511, in an envelope with his name on it. But when he got to the bank to deposit the money, he felt around in his pockets and found nothing, according to CBS News.
He had dropped the envelope, and a woman named Karla Montgomery, from Memphis, had found it. The only problem was that Thow’s name was misspelled as “Throw” on the envelope.
“I kept thinking in my mind. This was Dec 7, this was close to someone’s Christmas. It could be their Christmas present money. It could be their rent money,” she said.
For the next five months, Montgomery held the money as she searched every lead she could find, using police, the U.S. Marshals Service, the FBI and frequent searches on social media. Finally, she found Thow’s name online and, because he lived in Denver, decided to take a chance that the name she had was wrong.
When they finally met in person, Thow’s reaction transcended the money. He became emotional.
“I think her act of kindness has changed my life,” he told CBS. “It’s just been this domino effect. It’s like, if I have a choice to do the better thing or the good thing … I think of Karla. I think that’s how I’ll probably live the rest of my life.”
In Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, last month, a person found a bag with about $1,600 in cash at a local mall, along with a deposit slip that had no account number attached. He turned it into local police, who later received a call from a woman who was able to describe the bag and the money she had lost.
Police told TV station WBAY it was “refreshing” to see a person willing to do the right thing.
In Boardman, Ohio, two months ago, a man was carrying his company’s bank deposit via motorcycle, in a backpack he had failed to zip. According to TV station WKBN, a concerned citizen found the money, complete with deposit slip, on the road and immediately returned it.
I could go on. New examples are being reported all the time.
As I said a year ago, cynics might accuse me of presenting a distorted view. People who find money and keep it lurk in the shadows, where no one learns what they have done. But I say we hear enough about those people. It’s time we focused a bit more on the honest ones, who are plentiful and who change lives through their simple acts.
In a piece for Psychology Today a few years ago, Christian L. Hart, a professor of psychology at Texas Woman’s University, said studies show “most people are honest most of the time.”
Why?
“We tend to trust,” he wrote. “We are generally honest, and we believe that others are generally honest, too.”
That may not always be true when politicians are involved, but it’s a wonderful answer to those who use the political realm to argue that society at-large is falling to pieces.