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Comment by pif

5 hours ago

In civilised places, the government is the people. And civilised people know they are the government.

Like which places are those?

This is some idealist fairytale view that people like to believe in but doesn't actually exist.

  • This is unnecessarily confrontational. The real point here is that there better functioning democracies than the US. They have faults, but Scandinavia and much of northern Europe (partially excluding the UK) much better approximates what you call a fairytale than a US perspective might allow you to believe. Trust in and satisfaction with government institutions in Scandinavia and Finland are much, much higher than in the US, and it's largely justified by their competence and delivery of public goods.

    • >This is unnecessarily confrontational.

      Why?

      >but Scandinavia and much of northern Europe

      That's like 3-5 out of 195 countries and only 0,3%-0,5% of the world's population. Being born there is like winning the lottery so maybe take that into consideration when arguing with such examples since that's not the norm. Like what are the odds that people you talk to online are part of that 0,5%? So who's the one being needlessly confrontational?

      >Trust in and satisfaction with government institutions in Scandinavia and Finland are much, much higher than in the US

      I don't care about the situation in the US since I don't live there. I'm talking from the perspective in Europe(not Scandinavia) where I can't say the democracy is representing or serving me. No law maker asked about the major decisions the EU made.