Comment by AnthonyMouse

> Right now one party wants to:

> Remove the SEC, the FBI, defund the IRS and the DOJ.

There is negligible chance of actually eliminating these federal agencies, and even if that was the position of the entire party, you're just talking about a policy position.

If you brought in James Madison and he said that we shouldn't have a federal IRS because the government programs it funds are the role of the states, that wouldn't be any evidence that he is opposed to institutions, it's just a question of which institution should serve that role.

> And a member of congress is refusing to appoint any leaders of our military. Ostensibly due to a disagreement over abortion, but many believe it is retaliation for the military refusing to support an attempted coup a few years ago.

Which wouldn't work. If you were trying to retaliate against some specific military leaders, you can't do it by refusing to appoint some entirely different ones. If you were trying to retaliate against a bureaucracy as a whole, the way to do it is to reduce their budget.

Meanwhile we have the obvious motive that opportunistic politicians will do anything they think will get them on television regardless of whether it otherwise makes any sense or serves any purpose.

> Also there is discrediting all trust in voting and democracy itself after losing a national election (even though the administration's own Attorney General could find no meaningful evidence supporting it following his own nationwide investigation).

For this to fit your argument they would have had to do this with the purpose of discrediting the voting system. The most obvious motive for that would be to bolster support for their proposals for in-person voting requirements and voter ID etc.

Maybe they have an ulterior motive for wanting these things, but it's hard to argue that they wouldn't increase trust in the voting system. Election security experts broadly agree that optical scan paper ballots are more secure than purely electronic voting systems.

> And then there is the meme of the deep state, namely shorthand than anyone who is a civil servant and not a political appointee is not to be trusted.

This is fundamentally an argument about democracy.

Local governments commonly have separate elected offices for the board of education, the constabulary, the comptroller, even the dogcatcher. Because the US federal government was envisioned to be small and limited in scope, the only elected positions are the general legislature and the Presidential ticket.

Leaving the entirety of the administrative state to unelected officials was never the intention and it's hardly an unreasonable position to be critical of the consequences.

> But to say that both sides/parties are against trust in American society in my opinion is either a false argument, or tunnel vision in news sources.

In general if you think that one party is dramatically worse than the other, it's because of your news sources. The parties agree with each other on almost everything and most of the points of contention are drenched with hyperbole.

These are not angels and demons, they're human politicians representing different constituencies.