"Was I just naive..."
You just made the mistake most do. You believed your fellow man is good and deserves the benefit of the doubt.
The reality is that unfortunately, your fellow man is a self serving POS until he shows via his actions he isn't and deserves your trust. It sucks but thats the world we live in now.
@DB There was a time when I trusted people until they proved otherwise. Unfortunately, those days of conducting business on a handshake are pretty much gone, although I have done business just that way for decades. My word is my bond.
However, in the realm of politics, 'just tell 'em what they want to hear' is SOP, and when the voters were played for suckers by those who claimed solidarity with TEA party people and then went to DC and made things worse, track record now stands tall in estimating the worth of politicians. Trust is tenuous at best.
With the media, years ago I was in a local charitable group and started writing press releases for the media. Without doing so, the activities and actions and very nature of the group were so patently mischaracterized as to be unrecognizable, which I have found is the norm. If you hand it to them in short words and black and white, chances are they will be lazy enough to use it. That works. About the only thing I have seen in terms of consistency is that the media does not get the story straight, often misses or makes up 'facts', and often presents opinions which are based on flawed/no information as 'news'. They are not to be trusted.
The Russians, both by virtue of having a different worldview and their own nationalistic bias, are going to do what benefits them. There are plenty of folks there who want the old Cold War prestige back, with or without the animosity, and they are going to get it if they can. (Of course, there is money to be made, too.)
The more clear the motivation, the less unpredictable, but that still doesn't mean "trust" is there. Altruistic behaviour based on a realistic worldview is pretty much on the endangered species list. Every group has its charlatans, its ambitious climbers, and the greedy, and anyone who is a saint will be assailed by the attack dogs of all three.
