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Why are Amercians (as a country) suspicious of their government?

Myrtonos

Member
arg-fallbackName="Myrtonos"/>
In most democratic countries, governments are seen as friends, at least by people who have the vote. This makes sense if you think about it, why shouldn't the government be seen that way by the people who elect it? However, there is one democracy, the United States Of America where there is widespread suspiciousness about the government. But surely the thing to do in a democracy when suspicious of the current government is to vote for another at the next election.
 
arg-fallbackName="Led Zeppelin"/>
Americans are very much suspicous of their government, regardless of their political affiliation. I have lived in western European countries for half of my life and can tell you Europeans are oblivious to politics.. They only understand that the politician with the most experience should be elected into office. And that if every country in the world had a president that looked nice on TV, then everything will be ok.
SS
People in Europe have this stupid idea that world leaders are all friends with each other. They think president Obama was their friend. The US is only friends with you when they can get something out of it. Same goes with the relationship between any other 2 European countries. There is no European Union. Italy is not going to defend Germany if Russia or China invades from the east. I cant even buy cigarettes in Spain and bring them legally back to Austria, even though we use the same currency. WTF is that? So its all just a big lie.
 
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arg-fallbackName="Led Zeppelin"/>
But yes you are exactly right that Americans generally do not trust their government. I think you are very right and hope you don't take my response as a personal attack against you. I apologize if it's too venomous. But I think you brought up a very good point.
 
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arg-fallbackName="he_who_is_nobody"/>
It is nothing but opportunistic redirect In the US. If someone with a bit of charisma comes along and has a talking-point about the government a lot of people on the US will buy it because they do not know any better.

For one example, the Republican Party is supposed to be the party of small government, yet are mostly against the defund the police movement.

It all comes down to opportunities to score points with their base. Right now it is popular for right-wingers to distrust the government as a talking-point. In ten years time the script will flip.
 
arg-fallbackName="Myrtonos"/>
People in Europe have this stupid idea that world leaders are all friends with each other. They think president Obama was their friend. The US is only friends with you when they can get something out of it. Same goes with the relationship between any other 2 European countries. There is no European Union. Italy is not going to defend Germany if Russia or China invades from the east. I cant even buy cigarettes in Spain and bring them legally back to Austria, even though we use the same currency. WTF is that? So its all just a big lie.
But don't the people of these countries view their own governments (the ones they elect) as their friends, like the Italians viewing the Italian government as their friend and the Austrians viewing the Austrian government as their friend. Millions of Americans are suspicious of the U.S government. Do Canadians (as a country) view their own government as their friend?
 
arg-fallbackName="Led Zeppelin"/>
I have no f-ing idea. I think you are right but I can't really say for sure why it's like that. Americans are pretty crazy. Russians are also very crazy and I think they don't like their government as well. Maybe we all just have mental illness.
 
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arg-fallbackName="Led Zeppelin"/>
It is nothing but opportunistic redirect In the US. If someone with a bit of charisma comes along and has a talking-point about the government a lot of people on the US will buy it because they do not know any better.

For one example, the Republican Party is supposed to be the party of small government, yet are mostly against the defund the police movement.

It all comes down to opportunities to score points with their base. Right now it is popular for right-wingers to distrust the government as a talking-point. In ten years time the script will flip.

I was just reading this thread again and want to say that to me, this post basically demonstrates a perfect understanding of how politics works. I actually feel like I understand life better now, after reading it.
 
arg-fallbackName="BrachioPEP"/>
When you say that millions of Americans don’t trust the US government (or don't see it as friendly to its populous), I don't think most countries do and don’t forget that well over 100 million people voted against the current government (and do each time). Are the big Trump supporters trusting of the government? Remember that just a very small number of people can make a big impact, and if the media are involved, this too can be hugely effective.

In the UK, people have always been very distrusting of the government in power, with the press often openly supporting or opposing it. The media is extremely influential and in the UK, we are very ignorant. We know this because of the affiliation of various most popular press is a known, its sales and its written academic age target (young teenager level for the Sun, Britain’s most popular pornographic magazine newspaper), who’s view people trust due to the fact that they buy in/into it.

The press is very closely linked to the government in many ways and the press tend to have staff who tow the line and have likeminded political views.

From a UK position, The US media seems totally unable to ask president trump any critical questions and he tends to be the media and state what is happening and all are too afraid to do anything about it (without a fake news response from him and an abusive comment) . Compare media interviews of Trump with those of British political leaders, even despite the media support for Boris Johnson. British people of all persuasions have never known such rhetoric and language and unbecoming statements from any previous position holder and are at a loss how he gets away with it and that it just runs off his back as though he is impervious. He just removes any press that he doesn’t like the questions of and calls them stupid journalists sharing fake news, and constantly saying this, people believe him.

I think people see things differently from different perspectives like (geographical) locations and (political) viewpoints.

Obviously places like China, Korea, Russia, many African and South American countries and many Islamic state countries have very restrictive rules on freedom of speech and the likes of smaller countries do not tend to make International news, so many of us don’t know much about the view of their governments unless they specifically research it or follow those countries’ politics.

So, I don’t think the US is unique (or we just don’t know if it is).

Perhaps you had something specific in mind, like Black lives matter?
 
arg-fallbackName="Myrtonos"/>
I do have something specific in mind for another thread. Surely suspiciousness of government is more common in the U.S than most other democratic countries.
 
arg-fallbackName="BrachioPEP"/>
I don’t think it is helpful or adds anything to your question or my response, to ignore my suggested evidence or merely say, ‘but surely…’ and re-state your claim. Better to expand or say why my position is wrong, poor or untenable.

Having said that, this is not my area at all. I was more interacting to generate interest or more involvement on the site/topic/thread. Being critical and being suspicious of are different things for example. You may be referring to distrust based on/emitting from the US civil war and the right to bear arms or the far right terrorists (e.g. Timothy McVeigh) or that there are more conspiracy theories emitting from the US than elsewhere or the TV depictions of the nation and its many law enforcement agencies.
 
arg-fallbackName="Led Zeppelin"/>
I do have something specific in mind for another thread. Surely suspiciousness of government is more common in the U.S than most other democratic countries.

One thing I can say is Europeans are generally much more oblivious to world events or even their own foreign or domestic policies of the states in which they reside. In the US I would say about 70% would be oblivious and in any country in western europe would be about 95% oblivious. No one in Europe is even able to explain to me why it is not allowed to bring back more than a certain amount of cigarettes that I buy in another country in the EU that I pay for with Euros. That's just one thing. I could go on.

I hate to say that Europe is oblivious because I am a big fan of Europe actually. I work with many students from all over Europe and younger people in Germany and they are really amazing. Very intelligent and extremely polite. I like them better than young Americans. My wife and I even let one stay with us once a week when this corona virus thing started so he could save a trip traveling out of town to get to the university. I don't think I would ever let a student from the US into my home, the way I have seen them behave.
 
arg-fallbackName="Sparhafoc"/>
I have lived in western European countries for half of my life and can tell you Europeans are oblivious to politics.. They only understand that the politician with the most experience should be elected into office. And that if every country in the world had a president that looked nice on TV, then everything will be ok.
SS
People in Europe have this stupid idea that world leaders are all friends with each other. They think president Obama was their friend. The US is only friends with you when they can get something out of it. Same goes with the relationship between any other 2 European countries. There is no European Union. Italy is not going to defend Germany if Russia or China invades from the east. I cant even buy cigarettes in Spain and bring them legally back to Austria, even though we use the same currency. WTF is that? So its all just a big lie.


I've lived in many European nations, and although I've lived outside of Europe for half my life I am still a native European, but I don't recognize any of the above as being true.
 
arg-fallbackName="Sparhafoc"/>
One thing I can say is Europeans are generally much more oblivious to world events or even their own foreign or domestic policies of the states in which they reside.

Europeans are generally more oblivious to world events than US citizens?

That's not an analysis I've ever heard,; most Americans I know who've lived in Europe decry their own country's citizens' lack of knowledge about anything outside of the US.
 
arg-fallbackName="Sparhafoc"/>
I do have something specific in mind for another thread. Surely suspiciousness of government is more common in the U.S than most other democratic countries.

I'm not sure if it's easy to quantify, but perhaps it's more of the manner of suspicion. For example, I expect most people regardless of their nationality don't trust their politicians to always tell the truth, but I don't think it's common in most functional democracies for a substantial number of people to believe that owning and maintaining arms is necessary to stave off the threat of a tyrannical government.
 
arg-fallbackName="Led Zeppelin"/>
I've lived in many European nations, and although I've lived outside of Europe for half my life I am still a native European, but I don't recognize any of the above as being true.

It could be that we mostly know different kinds of people. Just from my personal experience I would say that people in the UK and maybe Spain are more informed on domestic politics than people in the US and that people in every other western European country are less informed. I even had a chance to talk about this with an important retired German psychologist (this does not mean I am right) who admitted this plainly to me and said that in Germany people tend to care less about policy and more about who has the most experience. He send it was mostly because countrys in Europe tend to either border or are closer in proximity to more different countries than the US is.

This was something I had never thought of before and it seems to be a good answer to me.
 
arg-fallbackName="RestrictedAccess"/>
Historically Americans are known for not trusting their rulers (thus the revolutionary war and civil war), but I don't think that it's because American's are necessarily more distrustful, so much as their inherently more outspoken. That's the first amendment for you.

Access to literally every available piece of information probably exacerbates it. It's very easy to be well-informed and mis-informed these days, and Americans are exceptionally diverse in thought that they can be either/or. It also doesn't help that we are taught to be involved in politics but never really taught how to parse crap information from valid information, so that can lead to lead to falling for baseless conspiracies fairly easily.

I think in a lot of American minds we expect rulers to be corrupt, but not the rulers who agree with our views, so you can see where Americans swing from trust to distrust depending on which part is in power for the next few years.
 
arg-fallbackName="BoganUSAFFLClerk"/>
In most democratic countries, governments are seen as friends, at least by people who have the vote. This makes sense if you think about it, why shouldn't the government be seen that way by the people who elect it? However, there is one democracy, the United States Of America where there is widespread suspiciousness about the government. But surely the thing to do in a democracy when suspicious of the current government is to vote for another at the next election.
I would say the various suspicious scandals over the years for presumably malicious purposes. Also the rampant possibly corrupt/incompetent actions made by the government.
Reagan defunding mental asylums and releasing them into public.
Obama with Fast and the Furious and releasing NFA and non NFA firearms to literal criminals and couldn't recover them.
The vast failure of the NICS in denying non prohibited persons in transferring a firearm.
The vast bureaucracy and ineffectiveness of American governmental programs.
The history of the establishment of the U.S. regarding mistrust of father nation and then splitting off from said nation to create our own due to mistrust.
Somewhat modern history in regards to lethal force used against corrupt Sherriff during the Battle of Athens in the 1940s.
The numerous suspicious armed conflicts regarding Israel.
Seemingly Incompetent and Arbitrary actions on behalf of the government with little or no positive effects in general should be held in contempt don't you agree?
 
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