Are these exceptional days, or is it only natural that faith in the competence of the government should diminish over time?

Faith in the competence of the government? No that’s not an independent universal phenomenon. It may however be predictable that whenever you have sick elements in your society, and groups other than the public itself, that self-interested people and groups will tend to get into your government and pervert it for their own sick agendas, instead of being a government for and by the people.

This is how the USA got a government of fake and incompetent pawns, for the corporations, with laws written by corporate-created groups like ALEC. Many of these politicians and government agencies aren’t just incompetent – they’re pretending to be actual public servants, as part of their actual role as corporate servants.

We don’t have faith we have eyes and ears and investigative journalism.

The US was set up with the premise that government was nothing worth having faith in, and so should be limited in what it could do.

But governments always grab for more power, and they usually do it by promising to do more than they can or should do.

But people, being people, actually believe the promises rather than see them as political deceptions.

But eventually, the deciept begins to show, and people “lose faith”.

A faith they should not have had in the first place.

But what I’m asking is whether or not that loss of faith increases with time or is that just a personal thing that we’re subject to as aging individuals? Is it possible that younger people have more confidence in government, but are destined to watch their trust erode with the years?

For me the burning question is why so many people vote against their own interests. Yes, the rich have control of the media, but are people so blinded by what they see on television that they can’t tell when they are being played for fools? Nearly everyone thinks they are in the middle class, but the middle class is slipping away, creating a sharp divide between rich and poor. The statistics are publicly available and universally agreed upon. How can anyone believe that the problem is going to be fixed by continuing to shift the tax burden away from the rich and onto everyone else?

This site is in many ways exceptional, and is by no means a cross section of this country. What you say is perfectly true. But politics (and pretty much everything about this issue) boils down to manipulating people into acting against their own interests. THAT’s the real game. And aberrations like the tea party are a textbook illustration of the process at work. No one is better skilled at this or in a better position to pull it off than the class with the money. And as long as they have scapegoats at which to point the finger, THEIRS is the message we receive.

Remember, this has ALWAYS been the problem of the rich in this country. They are clearly outnumbered at the polls, and no one will willingly fatten them up at his or her own expense, so the non rich MUST be convinced to vote against their own interests, and just in case of the accidental election of someone of principle, that person must be co-opted at the earliest opportunity.

I don’t think these are exceptional days. Lack of faith in the government goes back to at least ancient Greece.

Fifty years ago, when public schools still had text books, the history and civics books presented an optimistic and patriotic view of the development of our country, and the political system and people who made it happen. In retrospect, I view a lot of it as biased propaganda.

Government is only as competent as the people we elect to serve us. As a young adult I trusted candidates to attempt to fulfill their campaign promises. In the years since, I’ve learned that that was very naive; trust has to be earned. So now, I’m cynical about every candidate and politician until they spend years accumulating a body of work that they can be judged by.

So yes, my youthful optimism about my country and government have jaded with time. But I do wonder if my shift in attitudes is similar to how every generation tsk-tsks the generation that follows. Is it just a normal part of the aging process?

I don’t think these are exceptional days. The details and issues may change, but I have the impression that citizens have always complained about the government, and that there’s always a crisis to worry about, real or not. Only in hindsight, will we be able to comparatively evaluate if present day crises are any worse than crises past.

bravo!

Yes, these are exceptional days. Government is failing, the planet is over burdened with a glut of humanity, we are experiencing all manner of unrest and violence, planetary demise, global warming, extinction of 1000’s of species, hard to eradicate diseases, drought, on & on. I’d say we are closer to critical mass than ever before. Probably not in my lifetime but very possibly in my daughters.