People don't trust the government. A recent study by the Pew Research Center found a "perfect storm" of popular discontent associated with distrust of government.
Western governments have lost respect and credibility, in no small part due to the secrecy and deceit with which they conduct their affairs these days.
Many people are waking up to the fact that their governments lie, habitually ... that democracy as we know it is a sham, a charade.
The influence of corporate power, private wealth and the war industry is blatant, potent and uncompromising.
People are beginning to realize their public rights have been usurped by private interests and there's nothing they can do about it, because the government is beholden to a powerful, unaccountable few.
Government is rotten at the core and people are starting to see this.
Western governments defy international law with impunity.
They preach, hypocritically, lofty ideals of freedom and democracy, while cynically dismantling longstanding principles of common law and recklessly eviscerating civil liberties.
Our governments have fabricated evidence to mislead us into war, they've handed billions of public money to super rich private bankers. They recruit terrorists, abet terrorist organizations and fund false flag terror attacks against their own citizens.
It is no wonder people are feeling disgusted with their governments.
Dictatorships rule by force, western governments rule by farce.
Political theorists suggest the legitimacy of democratic government is derived from popular assent, which is empowered and conveyed through suffrage and demonstrated periodically by popular vote.
But the choices available to voters are exceedingly limited and determined by secretive and unaccountable processes. Real power in western democracies resides with those who determine the choices available to voters, not the voters themselves.
By controlling preselection and the provision of funds, vested interests control the democratic processes that supposedly endow the people with sovereignty and self-determination.
By ensuring that only those who share the interests and concerns of an influential few are ever elected to parliament, the ruling elite protect and preserve the status quo.
Politicians strut about, pretending to love babies and hate terrorists. They practice their performance in public like pop stars or prancing ponies, preened and pimped to private wealth behind closed doors.
Safely cocooned in a haze of myopic, self-congratulatory complacency, they drift, oblivious to the tide of rising anger that threatens to maroon them all, high on a rocky shore, somewhere unforgiving.
