Denial Charted

The hypocrisy of card holding republicans and isn't exactly a new revelation but it does bear repeating, if only as a reminder of that many party members behave little better than automatons when it comes to political discourse.  Below is a relatively recent Gallup pull concerning whether or not democrats, republicans or independents feel that the government has too much power.







The results of the graph aren't exactly surprising.  When a republican held the highest office in the land more than a few republicans were security state apologists with democrats bemoaning the growing American stasi,  or commissariat if you prefer, and a reversal of opinions right around the time of the 2008 presidential election.  All the while individuals who were not blind ideologues have largely had levels of mistrust that have remained above 50% of those polled  since 2005.  The only dips below 55% since that same period can be explained with the mistaken belief that our current administration would in any way reverse the course we and fear mongering during of a prospective shutdown.  This isn't surprising, but the percentage levels of mistrust by democrats post 2009 are.

Even republicans with their principal shirking allegiance to the terrible, and hardly conservative, policies of a republican administration never saw more than two thirds of republicans not thinking that the government had too much power.  What we see with democrats on the other hand is that the numbers get pretty low, and have remained there.  This begs the question of why, but the answer, in my opinion, is pretty self explanatory.  I don't think that the democrats are any more myopic than republicans when it comes to government abuse of power but I do think that these charts indicate a willing denial of reality.



Americans have always had, or at least professed, a level of mistrust with the government; we could go at length about how many American vote very differently from their stated values, but that is another discussion for another day.  After 2005, when the societal shock of 9/11 had dimmed, Americans began to questions the actions of the government and mistrust of their actions rose above half and hasn't declined beyond that point since.  So it remains a point of amusement for myself that while that number of Americans that mistrust the government has risen to record highs, that the mistrust levels of democrats have only just gotten to the low points, as seen on this poll, during the previous administration. What you are seeing is literally the collective denial by democrats that this would be revolutionary generation is hardly anything but.