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Comment by lenerdenator | Hacker News Reader

> Sure, you trust your government today.

Most Americans really, really don't. Gallup puts Americans' trust in major institutions, including several parts of the government, at around 30% [0]

In OECD countries, trust in government sits at around 39% [1]

I would say that most people in Western nations don't trust their government. Whether they agree with what all their governments are doing is another issue-by-issue matter, but I would guess they don't love that on the whole, either.

[0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/712436/confidence-institutions-...

[1] https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/oecd-survey-on-drivers-...

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Its one thing to not trust ones government.

Its another to do something truly effective about it.

Alas, the American people seem to be utterly paralyzed. Catatonic, even.

When all it really needs is civic responsibility and an understanding that the government derives its power from the people, and thus the people always get the government they deserve.

> When all it really needs is civic responsibility and an understanding that the government derives its power from the people, and thus the people always get the government they deserve.

You've had people being apologists for all manner of bad forms of government around the world for at least the past 25 years. This shouldn't be surprising.

> When all it really needs is civic responsibility and an understanding that the government derives its power from the people, and thus the people always get the government they deserve.

Look I encourage people to vote and participate in government and politics as much as possible, but it's extremely clear at this point that this is more and more untrue every day. The government derives it's power from billionaires now, and thus the people always get the government billionaires want. It may not be exactly the route they want, but it's the same end results.

Look no further for proof than the endless slew of city and county governments that capitulate to big tech and sign sweeping data center contracts without even notifying their constituents, intentionally ignoring the feedback they get, or simply silencing the dissenters when they speak at meetings. Even local government has been sold to the highest bidder.

This has frequently been true in American history though.

Think folks were thrilled with the robber barons of the railroad area also owning newspapers?

Imho, the core thing that worsened was the election system. Specifically, closed primaries and gerrymandering. Both because they disincentivize centrists and compromise.

Ranked choice, mandatory opening of party primaries, and a Supreme Court definition of unacceptable gerrymandering (mathematically-based) would get us better government.

It's also clearly the wrong question for this decade. Private / public sector cooperation and all of the barriers between them that have been degraded and chipped away has left us with a very broken economic system that looks less and less like capitalism every day.

They say that and then act the opposite. The cognitive dissonance is astonishing. Consider the MAGA deep state narrative and how it literally now exists because of them.

Distrust of the government comes in different levels: you can be just distrustful enough to be skeptical yet accepting, and so distrustful that you actively try to vote the bums out. I don't think the polls distinguish between them.

Trump didn't bring the CIA and MI6 into existence. That's liberal cope from the years they spent yelling about how secret police were actually good now, because they didn't like Trump. Well now they like Trump - happy?

Which “liberals” are you talking about? My circle of leftists complained about the CIA just as much during the Obama administration.

lol. Talk about cope. You just invented a strawman and assumed it was my position so that you could claim victory. I guess you don’t know many progressives because by and large the CIA has been considered problematic forever. But it wasn’t celebrated the way MAGA cheers for ICE.

I would encourage you to refrain from saying things like ‘lol. Talk about cope.’ here, let your argument stand on its own without baiting the other person into responding emotionally.

I’m not offering this advice because I’m perfect either, I find it difficult sometimes to be respectful of someone I disagree with. You can take it or leave it, I’ll just say editing those sorts of things out of my own posts has been helpful.

The Trump (read: Russell Vought et al.) playbook is transparently self-serving:

   1. Complain loudly about weaponization of institutions
   2. Use public support to "reform" those institutions
   3. Weaponize those institutions against opponents
   4. (Implied) Everyone forgets those institutions were previously less corrupt

The entire reason Trump spent so much time talking about the swamp was that his band always had every intention of furthering government corruption, albeit to his own ends.

That's a lot easier if you've first degraded public trust in institutions.

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