In a way your post is very interesting to me and sort of reflects what got me thinking about this and curious enough to ask what others views are.
Our state recently purchased the local Hewlett-Packard campus. They are working on moving all the various departments there so as to have everyone in one place and not be paying rent on a bunch of different buildings.
My company has moved two offices, Industrial Commision and Public Utilities Commission. As the person om charge of recieving and placing all the “stuff” at the destination I got to meet and work with several of the Comissioners Themselves as well as the folks under them. Some were jerks but there was one gal, a utilities commissioner, who was as humble, do it herself, down to earth, funny person as one could want. She was eager to help us move stuff and set up not only her office, but just everyone’s stuff. She put a (good) face on a bureaucracy that was utterly anonymous and faceless to me. And thus, I trust the Public Utilities Commision a little bit more now and will likely feel less upset when the tell the give the power company permission to raise rates by whatever percent.
I think my current nation’s government is doing a decent job, though they are not perfect, of course.
FWIW, my “preferred” party is currently in power. But when the “other” party was in power—as was the case until a couple of years ago—I’d probably have said more or less the same thing. They were doing more things that I didn’t agree with, but I have to admit that on the whole they were keeping the country moving on a more or less even keel.
I don’t “trust” my government(s) any more than I “trust” any institution. Government entities generally do their jobs even when their efficiency leaves something to be desired.
I also don’t trust claims that there are conspiracies lurking in every corner and the only answer is mob rule and/or going to live off the grid in a remote mountain cabin.
A decade or so ago there was a movement in the great state of Illinois to change their license plate motto to:
“ILLINOIS - WHERE OUR EX-GOVERNORS MAKE OUR LICENSE PLATES.”
At that time IIRC there were at least two ex’s in the state pen.
I have a Structural Engineer’s License from Illinois, which has the name of the then Governor emblazoned on it. This was Otto Kerner. Shortly after I got my license Otto was sentenced to 3 years in the pen for mail fraud.
Wow. You know, kanicbird, I think you’re a wingnut (albeit a harmless, entertaining, basically gentle and good-hearted wingnut), and I’m certain your God is an oppressive authoritarian construct. But in the post quoted above, you approach profundity and truth.
There’s very few things I trust less than any branch of government. Local, small municipalities maybe a little more trust, but on the whole I do not trust them at all.
Thinking “The Government” is one coherent entity with a coherent philosophy and direction is part of the problem.
Any large organization is only given a direction at a high level. Each level has its own leadership, and each of those leaders will do what they want to a large extent because the day still has 24 hours if you have ten people under you or ten thousand. You can apply that down the hierarchy, at every individual level, and you end up with the government as a machine controlled by policy in the same way a city is a machine controlled by laws; that is, kind of, at a high level, but only in very broad strokes.
I trust that individuals will do what they do for all the reasons individuals do what they do, and most individuals try to do their best. I trust that the majority of people in organizations like NOAA and the Coast Guard are doing their best to deal with the weather and patrol the waterways, respectively, so I look at National Weather Service forecasts multiple times a day. The NWS is part of “The Government” as a part of NOAA, I’ve found their forecasts to not have the dry bias and warm bias that other forecasts do, and I trust they’ll keep on keeping on. Similarly, I trust that if I ever lose my mind entirely and go down to the sea in a ship, the Coast Guard will haul me into a rescue vessel when it inevitably all goes horribly wrong.
I live in the UK and generally trust my Government(s).
Sadly now we have Boris Johnson in charge :smack:, so of course I don’t trust this one at all.
Boris only decided to leave the EU to get power and lies freely.
Uh, ok, except I wasn’t asking about parts of governments, but governments as whole entities, specifically city, county, state (or province as appropriate) and national.
In my reply to ZipperJJ, I mentioned a couple of parts of my state government I’ve interacted with myself recently in part as a response to him(her?) Saying they are on the local city council, thus being able to give a pov that is from the inside.
(Hmm, I wonder if there are there countries with baronies instead of counties)
This isn’t the Pit so I can’t tell you what I really think of the government but suffice it to say stacked with much, much more than it’s share of (elected) criminals, (patronage) slackers & incompetents.
Yes, there may be a few good ones but even a broken clock has the correct time occasionally.
We’ve already had a warning issued in this thread & we’ve had a poster who stated they are an elected official. To tell you what I really think of elected officials might not have me on thin ice but instead in need of a flotation device.
But I have chosen to believe that as Americans, we are the government. And that for the most part, most of us generally are not trying to sink the boat.
I also think that most people who work in most levels of government are generally good, well-intentioned people. The majority of them are trying to do a good job and some are wholly dedicated to the doing the best public service they possibly can. But they are human and flawed and can get stuff wrong.
But in a general sense, I trust “the government.”
However, I emphatically do not trust specific politicians.