the idea that lack of trust in leaders and institutions is caused by anything other than a few decades of ramming "neo-liberalism" down the throats of their voters, exporting their jobs, failing to protect their countries from known terrorist threats then rushing off madly and spewing trillions of dollars & hundreds of lives engaging in unwinnable wars ( one on entirely false pretences ) that result in nothing except more global instability whilst - for an encore - slavishly licking the back-sides of bankers as they proceeded to systematically loot & then collapse the entire financial system, then robbing the rest of society to bail out the crooks who precipitated it , along with their general incompetence, arrogance & self interest verging on corruption is frankly rather missing the point.
Okay, let's take this point by point, because I think you are exaggerating a bit.
1. Not every politician or every political party supports neo-liberalism. It has become an important agenda for corporate interests, and they are giving it the hard sell, and that means plenty of media outlets will support neo-liberalism and that in turn forces a politician's hand if they want to get re-elected. Is this state of affairs ideal? Far from it. What is your answer to the problem?
2. Exporting jobs. Well, the fact is that manufacture in the developed world is far more expensive, so the corporations won't keep factories open when there are cheaper overheads elsewhere. It isn't a matter of exporting jobs, its a matter of competitive advantage being higher in poorer countries, on the other hand, they get all the pollution and factory jobs that the developed world doesn't seem to want for the most part anyhow. Would you want to work in a factory? Do we sign on as a nation to pay taxpayers money to keep unprofitable industries open, or let the market do its thing? Sounds like you have a beef with Capitalism more than you have a beef with government on this one.
3. Failing to protect their countries from Terrorist threats. I must disagree entirely on this point. The fact is that while there are occasional terrorist attacks, the vast majority of them are thwarted. Statistically, you are more likely to be struck by lightning than die in a terror attack. Personally, I think that the loss of privacy created by anti-terror legislation is a greater threat than terrorism itself, but I am in a grave minority on this apparently.
4. Trillions of Dollars spent on unwinnable wars. Well it is true that wars are expensive, and it is also clear that there has been a good deal of corruption involved in the war in Iraq specifically. It hardly seems fair to blame both sides of politics for that catastrophe, however; one side is far more at fault than the other. It is also worth pointing out that in the first half of the 20th Century, a war like Iraq would have killed tens of thousands of servicemen, rather than mere hundreds. That is a definite improvement, but nobody talks about that. Nobody also talks about how after a terror attack, everyone is clamoring for action, then a government intervenes and starts a war, then everyone whines about there being a war, thus denying the war the support it needs to be won. The 24hr New Cycle has a lot to answer for imo.
As for winning a war in Afghanistan, the last person who did that was Genghis Khan, who murdered the populace wholesale and built towers out fo the skulls of the slaughtered. Why is nobody touting this as an answer I wonder? It has worked in the past after all...
5. The issue of global instability. Inherently, going to war creates instability, but the alternative is to simply roll over and let your aggressors get away with attacking your country. What are the other options? Deport all Muslims? I'm sure people will just love that, but it would certainly answer the problem.
6. Bailing out the crooks who caused the financial collapse. The crooks who caused the GFC were Goldman Sachs and their short selling. They didn't need to be bailed out, they basically wound up controlling the world. If you are talking about the banks who sold bad derivative stocks, it wasn't just the banks themselves who were bailed out, it was the families who had their deposits with those banks who were bailed out. It is also the government's duty to do exactly that. The rule is that every bank has to maintain a statutory deposit with their nation's central bank, normally about 10% of their assets, as a surety against a run on the bank. Now if the bank is going to fail, the government steps in and covers them against everyone panicking and withdrawing their money. Without this defense mechanism, Capitalism would have failed decades ago and you wouldn't own a computer to complain about things on.
7. Incompetence, arrogance, self interest in politicians. FFS, politicians are people, and having met quite a few on most sides of politics, they are generally better people than the tinfoil hat brigade. Tinfoilers love to accuse and complain but have no answers to the problems they are complaining about and reject all answers offered as unsatisfactory, while literally demonizing anyone who disagrees with them, calling them reptiles and whatnot. The truth of the matter is that most politicians are masochistic idealists. They go into politics hoping they can make a difference, firmly believing in a set of principles and with a plan. Of course, no plan survives contact with the enemy, and very few politicians have the diversity of skill set that they need to solve everything that is thrown at them. If you want incompetence, arrogance and self-interest, you should compare what we have to what goes on in properly authoritarian countries where your right to bitch about everything is curtailed by "Fearless Leader". Is every politician a saint? Hell no, but neither are you. Get some perspective and be an adult about things. Just because you don't agree with someone doesn't mean they worship Satan, or swim in money and pussy while eating babies.
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The fact is that the world has always been in a state of chaos and anarchy. Government in the form we have it in the developed world was created because real (not idealized) anarchy is a squalid state of affairs and tyrannies (read "authoritarian regimes") are a grotesque travesty of a way of life. Given the opportunity to be truly free, people become really awful to one another e.g. Somalia. And for the record, there is no such animal as a benevolent dictator.
For a brief moment in history after WW2, TV managed to homogenize opinion. There were only a few channels, and each of them got their news through Reuters. This meant that there was a manufactured consensus of opinion. Then the internet came along, and we traded that consensus for a staggering access to information. All the care that had been put into trying to create an illusion of stability crumbled like a bad marriage under financial stress.
Is there corruption in politics? Surely. But I didn't hear you suggesting a way of legislating against gerrymandering, and controlling political donations. You say politicians are incompetent, arrogant and self-interested? That just means they're human beings like you. Get off your high horse. If you think you can do better, become a politician. It isn't as hard as all that. Any fool can do it and you have to be a fool to try. Nobody will love you for it, and there is a 99% chance that everyone in the country will despise you by the time you leave office regardless of how little or how much you do for them. Given how much politicans are reviled, I am not surprised some of them become corrupt. People are going to think the worst of you regardless of what you do, so why not do the crime, right? What surprises me is how few politicians actually are corrupt however. So the question is really, whether you are enough of a masochist to pick up that poisonous burden?