Americans Trust in Federal Government Sinks to New Depths | Hacker News Reader

Americans Trust in Federal Government Sinks to New Depths

news.gallup.com

Since our federal government's raison d'être is to benefit Israel at the expense of the US and the world, it's no surprise that Americans no longer trust it.

"Public trust in government has been trending downward for the past two decades, but this year brings steeper declines in some measures."

I'm surprised there was ever much trust in government, and looking at the graph.. surprised to see it was 83% in 1974, during the Nixon administration, and it's just been going down ever since.

The federal government used to be able to do things. In 74 it was only 5 years after NASA landed men on the moon, and there were continuing launches right until about then. Watergate started the trend of distrust.

The inflation run in the seventies, ending in 1981, probably helped quite a bit in eroding trust. I'm going to call non-causation on Watergate.

The government was passing constitutional amendments and major legislation like the Civil Rights Act back then. I'm surprised you're surprised (I'm not actually, citizens being wholly ignorant of even recent history has been entirely normalized and not even shamed anymore).

legislative branch is the lowest at 28% approval and everything else is at 33% while judicial seats at 45%. Everything is about more than a half lower than beginning of millennium.

Is a surprise? Nope, not to me as a mere observer. Judicial sounded a bit too high to me after citizen united. Don't worry will eventually match the rest.

One thing I'm curious about re: Citizens United...

Do people have a problem with the validity of the legal reasoning, or with the court's wisdom in their final decision?

IANAL by a long shot. But I wonder if the constitution is pretty clear on the matter, but flawed in the sense that it sets us up for the current situation.

Here’s an opinion poll from 2025:

https://issueone.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Issue-One-Yo...

Take with a grain of salt, of course; N is about 1000 and they were contracted by what I assume was a PAC trying to pass an anti-corruption state issue in Montana.

But that seems to be a significant, bipartisan moiety that disagree with parts of SCOTUS’ opinion.

"People", in the broad sense implied by a national poll, don't make that distinction (though if you asked them directly, they would have an opinion). They care about outcomes, not rationale. That actually makes perfect sense - that should be a typical person's point of view.

Of course this is orthogonal to the tribalism overlay that distorts everybody's perceptions, but I'm speaking about the foundation underneath that.

> Do people have a problem with the validity of the legal reasoning, or with the court's wisdom in their final decision?

Not familiar with the case, but Citizen United was a 5-4 decision, so the dissenting opinions are probably the first place you should look at if you're looking for issues with the legal reasoning and/or the court's wisdom.

Not to mention, we now know that many on the court (and particularly those among the majority) have been accepting undisclosed gifts for years as well as their spouses accepting significant business dealings with those who at the time or subsequently had dealings with the court.

Obviously there is a problem. It has upgraded corporations to speak as people and allowed them to spend as much as money as they want for elections and it has distorted the already distorted electioneering process to a farce.

Who are people ? the AstroTurfed versions that claimed to be people that got the thing through the courts or real people? Are real people familiar with cause and affect given the media presentations.. I don't know.. You have to ask them.

Was the given judicial ruling based on some sort of logical reasoning? No.. not just in my opinion; there are many that see it that way and they can tell you the exact legal reasonings. In my opinion though, the courts bases were preloaded for the game to deliver and they would have required extended hacking to get it loaded.

The decision was legally sound. Most every supreme court decision is, even those that have been overruled. People forget that for a case to reach the supremes there has to be sound legal argument on multiple sides. Their decisions are therefore rather arbitrary but that is OK. The legislature can bypass any scotus decision through new laws or even a constitutional amendment. Our present difficulty is that the legislative branch has all but abandoned that role.

Right now, is a robot get incorporated, it can be recognized legally as a person and Ai can theoretically control it . and that is because of poor decision by the justices.

https://theconversation.com/could-an-artificial-intelligence...

Supreme Court voting 5-4 means it was very close to being "legally sound" the opposite way. Not very sound, then.

Both sides can be sound at the same time. If one side was unsound, it wouldnt have to go to the supremes.

For 90%+ of the comments I see in only discussions that complaining about Citizens United the complaint is actually about something that has nothing to do with Citizens United.

Is it time to dissolve the Union? Not by unilateral secession, but by intentional dialogue, admitting that what we have isn't working, agreeing that individual states can continue to exist, and dismantling and devolving federal power to levels with greater direct representation and engagement. To the degree that many concerns benefit from multiple states sharing policies and standards, individual states may agree to opt-in to membership in program/policy-specific binding unions, e.g. a Colorado River League of states which participate in its management, a Research Union of states that pool funds for research, with grants issued by non-political groups of researchers, etc.

All by design

Okay whose design

The Republican Party, broadly. It's much easier to dismantle government when you've convinced voters that it is untrustworthy and incapable of success.

So their plan is:

    1. Destroy the government.

    2. ???

    3. Profit.

Step 2 is privatization, preferably to your friends and donors.

How do they intend to keep away angry people with pitchforks without a government?

> How do they intend to keep away angry people with pitchforks without a government?

We're talking about America here, not France. :)

Okay, I meant angry people with guns.

That's the neat part about these fascist morons. They have delusions of longevity and have convinced themselves that they'll be the despots that never get overthrown. Or they flee to Argentina, as is tradition

Has already started. Peter Thiel!

Oh, they don't want no government at all. Just to get rid of the parts that redistribute wealth downwards and/or make it more difficult for private enterprise to make profit. The police can stay, provided they stay on-side.

What angry people with pitchforks?

They want very strong government. Surveillance, ICE, FBI, police all available to go after opponents. And going after fraud as long as it's committed by the little guy.

They intend to keep people in a precarious position of debt and dependence such that they can't afford to pay attention because they're too busy trying to get by and afraid to lose their health insurance.

They tell the angry people all their problems and fears are the fault of one or more out groups (e.g., immigrants, non-whites, and trans people) like they have for decades already.

2. "Do whatever the fuck we want because who's gonna stop us, the government we gutted? lol"

Duh.

They'd rather be in control of ashes than not be in control of a functional society.

Step 1: Render government services ineffective

Step 2: Award contracts to private companies to fulfill the recently created gap in need

Step 3: profit

In Britain that seems to be the game plan for the NHS.

> Okay whose design

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast

"The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it.”

Newt Gingrich set the standard for modern Republican obstructionism, but the idea goes further back. For example, Reagan’s “I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.” Ghastly statement in retrospect given what’s happened in the past 40 years. Imagine taking over an org and saying that you don’t think it’s capable of producing any positive outcomes for its shareholders (or stakeholders, more generally).

https://www.project2025.observer/en

Fox News and GOP generally, imo, are still part of a Business Plot to overthrow the American government and end democracy. It's unfortunate but: being awful at governance, government, is alas extremely beneficial to them, to what they most actively want.

They said it out loud. It's not even remotely veiled. This sounds so glonzo, so whackadoodle. But these people are engaged in the active sabotage and destruction of the state, are afraid above all of things like "socialism" which just means "government". Doing things.

40 years since Reagan said: "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."

here in the San Francisco Bay Area, about three hours from now the actual tide sea levels will be about 1.42 feet above the predicted (Federal) tidal charts. I have been under the impression that those charts are politics-free and generally very accurate. Are the applicable Federal ocean tidal charts updated right now?

I will note that only 15 years ago, an indy report called "Adapting to Rising Tides" that shows this exact situation, was publicly attacked by several local govt agencies here, while the idea of "Climate Change" was actively attacked in the public media.

That’s due to the kelvin waves caused by El Niño. Tide forecasts use astronomical methods which do not account for something non-periodic like this. Depending on where the waves are tide might be 1-2ft higher than normal. This is partly why Newport flooded on Friday.

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