Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread (news.gallup.com)

288 pointsby karakoram7 hours ago216 comments

autoexec 6 hours ago

Corruption in the US isn't new, but it's never been done as openly as it has been recently. I don't think it's a good thing. It shows that the government isn't concerned about what the public thinks, which suggests that they believe they no longer have to be. That's not a healthy sign for what's supposed to be a democracy.

iAMkenough 6 hours ago

Sucks seeing the federal government weaponize the U.S. Postal Service to prevent legitimate ballots from being counted.

BLKNSLVR 5 hours ago

Also gives an idea as to how desperate and paranoid they are.

vkou 4 hours ago

What would anyone expect to happen when people are stupid enough to elect someone who tried, with multiple parallel methods, including an attack on Congress, to steal one election already.

mrtesthah 35 minutes ago

It doesn't just "suck" -- it's a path to dictatorship that threatens the freedoms and lives of its citizens.

iAMkenough 19 minutes ago

It's not a path, it's a result. That sucks.

estearum 6 hours ago

Well it’s almost certainly not just more open. But also more common and more intense. There is 100% absolutely no possible comparison to Trump’s personal acts of corruption in any prior White House ever.

shimman 5 hours ago

Trump is bad, but please let's not excuse corporate neoliberal dems that are totally fine with insider trading, legalized bribes, and are quite proud that their consultant campaign workers get lucrative gigs at corporations/boards due to insider access. I mean we have people like Gillibrand that are openly in bed with the crypto industry while somehow decrying what Trump is doing. Feels like they're upset that Trump exposed how rotten this game has gotten.

At some point you realize there is a game that you were never playing and it becomes a bipartisan issue.

estearum 5 hours ago

All of that is several orders of magnitude less bad than a normal Tuesday in the Trump administration.

For evidence, refer to TFA.

shimman 5 hours ago

Okay and how do you think it helps the democratic candidate's ability to win elections when they are part of the same party that supports corporations over people? In the not so recent past the democratic party controlled Congress for 60+ years on the new deal coalition alone, now look what the party has morphed into...

I read the article too, in what sane world is it okay if 70% of citizens thought their governments + corporations are corrupt over a 20 year time span here. Society apparently has get quite bad for the last 20% to realize the state of things.

The only thing I got out of this article is that both parties + the F500 need to be destroyed.

estearum 5 hours ago

Did I say it was okay?

If you think I (or virtually anyone else) am a fan of the two-party system, you probably aren't paying very close attention to... anything.

Things can be varying levels of imperfect. Things can be imperfect and acceptable, imperfect and bad, or imperfect and extremely extremely bad. It's not a sign of intelligence not to be able to discern between them.

vannevar 5 hours ago

>The only thing I got out of this article is that both parties + the F500 need to be destroyed.

I don't know, if we'd had an overwhelmingly Democrat-dominated government, we'd have comprehensive bans on government insider trading and we'd correct the bad ruling in Citizens United. Corporatism is definitely a bipartisan issue, but at least Democrats recognize it as a problem, while to Republicans it's a feature. Not everything in politics is symmetrical, and misguided nihilism is actually how we got where we are. Turns out the road to hell is paved with "it's both sides."

koolba 2 hours ago

> I don't know, if we'd had an overwhelmingly Democrat-dominated government, we'd have comprehensive bans on government insider trading

We had two years under Biden with Democrat control of the House and the Senate. They passed no legislation to ban insider trading.

It probably didn’t help that the poster octogenarian for insider trading was Speaker of the House

> and we'd correct the bad ruling in Citizens United.

CU was absolutely the correct ruling as it just means I can take money from wherever I’ve earned it and spend it on publicizing my message.

Prior to that you had to buy a media company to have the same effect. It was perfectly fine for Fox News or The NY Times to focus articles and segments on what they deem newsworthy to push their narrative. But if I made my money selling widgets, I couldn’t spend it the same way.

It’s a perfectly reasonable ruling.

> Corporatism is definitely a bipartisan issue, but at least Democrats recognize it as a problem, while to Republicans it's a feature.

The same people probably complain the Senate is an antiquated body that should not exist because mob rule is the only true voice of the people.

AdieuToLogic 3 hours ago

> The only thing I got out of this article is that both parties + the F500 need to be destroyed.

Destruction is easy, as we are all witnessing.

Making things better is hard. It takes commitment to incremental change, often having to overcome setbacks, and accepting that the product of democracy is inherently nonlinear.

Democracy also demands that its participants understand that most of the time what each individual wants to be, will not be exactly as they envision, since that would be autocracy.

vannevar 5 hours ago

No one is excusing them. But it's worth pointing out that in every aspect of government ethics reform, from campaign financing to insider trading by government officials, the legislation promoted by Democrats is stronger than that promoted by Republicans, who often not only don't promote reform but actively oppose it. For example, the recent lukewarm ban on insider trading was opposed by Democrats on the grounds that it was too weak, excluded the President and VP, and included unrelated voter regulation measures. And the Democrats have been trying to pass legislation to correct Citizens United for years. So while it's a bipartisan issue, one party is much more pro-reform than the other.

abletonlive 4 hours ago

> For example, the recent lukewarm ban on insider trading was opposed by Democrats on the grounds that it was too weak

Yeah you're brainwashed

grvdrm 4 hours ago

Fair take, I think.

But we didn’t have to vote DJT into office as a counteracting force. Whether every decision is bad or not, not my point. It just seemed obvious that he wasn’t the right guy.

Some people can’t vote against their party. Some people believe write in is the move.

autoexec 4 hours ago

A write in, or even just scrawling "FUCK YOU" across the ballot is at least an active protest. It shows that you aren't apathetic to, or okay with, what is going on. It'd be interesting to see a write in campaign for someone with enough public support to be more than just a protest vote though. It'd be interesting to see someone campaign to the public with no interest in participating in the two party system at all, just asking the public to write them in when the time comes.

mypalmike 3 hours ago

Voting is a massively multiplayer game, not an individual sport.

If you want to protest, please do it. But throwing away your vote is not a protest, it’s a method of ceding a small amount of power.

bandofthehawk an hour ago

There are plenty of third-party candidates in most elections. However, most people are convinced that they have to vote for the lesser of two evils. In addition, a third party or independent candidate who starts getting too much public support will be likely be sabotaged long before election day. For example look up Butch Ware's recent run for governor in California. It's just the tip of the iceberg in how the two party system maintains control.

rootusrootus 4 hours ago

After reading about Ground News, I am starting to gain a real appreciation for how effective "both sides are bad" is at benefiting the right. It may well be the closest I've seen to 4D chess in reality.

hakunin 2 hours ago

When I hear people making these claims (all unproven theories, or misrepresentation of what really happens), I want to know: what happened in democratic administrations that went in favor of a large corporate donor and against the public? Any specific example where they diverged, and a politician ruled in favor of the corp, and against their constituents?

bandofthehawk an hour ago

Maybe it doesn't qualify as a personal act of corruption, but George W. lying us into the the Iraq war followed by capturing people off the street and then torturing them in military prisons, is comparable to what's happening today, in my opinion.

jeffbee 6 hours ago

Implying that it's always been this way is part of the reason we are now here. For my entire life, bad faith commentators insinuated that the federal government was rife with corruption. When under Democratic control, of course. The time that Al Gore made one long-distance telephone call from his official desk, using his own personal calling card, birthed over 200 New York Times articles, 30 of them on the front page. We just had to get to the bottom of all that corruption!

netsharc 5 hours ago

"Both sides are just as bad" is copium for when the guy from "your side" is revealed to be a corrupt piece of shit. You don't like it, so you justify to yourself that the other party is also full of creeps and assholes and thieves, so you can continue to support your guy guilt free...

Of course the supporters of one particular political party is much more better at gymnastics of the mental kind than the other side. Having no spine makes it quite easier...

dispomatrix 4 hours ago

Yeah, because the disposition matrix is peak democracy.

iamnothere 4 hours ago

The problems that happened during the Clinton admin (with the exception of Whitewater) weren’t so much corruption as they were short-sighted neoliberal trade deals and hostility to organized labor, which accelerated the process of hollowing out the country. But this was also an unusual period in US history due to the end of the Cold War, so this administration could be an exception. Most of the scandals from this period appear quaint.

cucumber3732842 3 hours ago

An under-examined axis of this problem is that people choose to believe in corruption because it's better than the alternative.

It's way more comforting to believe that Bill Clinton's buddies (or whoever) got rich selling industrial America overseas to the cheers of the progressives who thought all that stuff was dirty any way because at least that way it looks sane and planned and rational, albeit selfish, than it was done out of ignorance or malice.

And once enough people believe in the corruption, it manifests itself because it's perceived as how things are.

Terr_ 5 hours ago

> It shows that the government isn't concerned about what the public thinks

Similar to the "Death of a Euphemism" [0], where some politicians decide they don't have to cloak their proposal in the trappings of reasonability any more.

I highly recommend the whole series, as it has renewed relevance today.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dBJIkp7qIg

yongjik 5 hours ago

I think it's worse. It's not that the government doesn't care that the public hates it; it's more like the government is doing whatever it wants and half the public is going wild absolutely loving it.

Well, maybe a bit less than half these days.

Loughla 5 hours ago

The half that supports this nonsense genuinely believes this level of corruption has always existed. They're just happy it's their team this time.

I simply do not understand American politics.

esafak 5 hours ago

It's a very banana republicy thing and not uniquely American.

subarctic 4 hours ago

Well, banana republics are run by American companies from what i understand

Sl1mb0 3 hours ago

Lol do you know how the term "Banana Republic" originated

esafak 3 hours ago

Yes, of course. There's a whole wikipedia article on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic

Modern usage is not about fruit companies.

irishcoffee 5 hours ago

Nobody does. The amount of teenage angst posted in this forum about the current admin is amusingly pathetic. None of it matters. Congress constantly gets a free pass while we focus on a figurehead largely enabled by a passive and embarrassing congressional electorate. “We found the scapegoat, blame that guy!”

It’s really embarrassing

conception 5 hours ago

This is greatly because most congressional elections are not competitive.

magicalist 4 hours ago

> “We found the scapegoat, blame that guy!”

Yeah, that's not what an scapegoat is.

hackernud3s 2 hours ago

What's a scapegoat then?

ThunderSizzle 4 hours ago

Corruption has been rampant under multiple administrations. I actually had hoped Trump might root out more corruption in his 2nd term, but two things happened: Congress wouldn't go afraid the corruption that was being found, and Charlie Kirk was assassinated in broad daylight...after 2-3 assassination attempts on Trump himself too.

It's easier to start looking the other way when bullets start flying.

Having said that, I'm not saying Trump was a saint, but it seems this board forgets we just had Obama and Biden running their corruption rings for 2 decades too...

michaelhoney 3 hours ago

If you really can’t see the difference between Trump’s corruption and any other recent president, you have a reality problem.

rapind 4 hours ago

If Trump tomorrow says communism is great, then every Fox news host, MAGA content creator, and MAGA bot would be extolling the virtues of communism. The republican house and senate would enable it, maybe with a small bribe here and there. There is no line. There is no integrity. It's just looting.

Petersipoi 3 hours ago

We're just going to ignore the open communists that are infiltrating the other party? You sound intellectually honest.

amanaplanacanal 3 hours ago

I think you missed their point entirely.

mjmsmith 2 hours ago

To be intellectually honest, please name a few open communists infiltrating the other party.

sbseitz an hour ago

Troll or pure clown.

rootusrootus 4 hours ago

> I simply do not understand American politics.

You are in good company with most Americans in that regard.

It seems like the whole "we just blame the other side for everything we want to do, and then use that as justification when we actually do it" strategy must be well orchestrated, but the voters themselves legitimately seem to believe it is actually how things work. I am darkly impressed at the skillful manipulation.

tstrimple 4 hours ago

Imagine there had been no Nuremberg trials. The Nazis just got a slap on the wrist and almost immediately let back into politics as usual. That's how we got here. We're still fighting the remnants of the confederacy. Germany and Japan in particular purged most of those elements from their society. Here we built statues to the evil fucks.

bigfatkitten 3 hours ago

The United States must be one of the only nations on earth that names its own military bases after enemy commanders.

archonis 3 hours ago

>> We're still fighting the remnants of the confederacy.

Consicely put, and not nearly present enough in contemporary discourse.

0xDEAFBEAD 3 hours ago

Here's a map which attempts to estimate when slavery was abolished across various parts of the world:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/zsnr8q/year_of_abo...

The US wasn't much of an outlier.

As a general rule, anyone who tries to use slavery as a skeleton key to understand US politics is most likely an ideologue with an agenda. Sane people don't propose struggle sessions for events which happened 100+ years ago when everyone involved is long dead. You wouldn't point to a gigantic statue of Genghis Khan to explain what's wrong with modern Mongolia.

I don't think this is a slavery thing. Trump just sucks.

ModernMech 3 hours ago

Genghis Khan died 800 years ago. The last American to have born into slavery died in the ~1970s~ 1960s.

0xDEAFBEAD 3 hours ago

The 1970s were 50 years ago. "Long dead", in other words. Did you know that Brazil didn't abolish until 1888? They also imported far more than the US: https://www.slavevoyages.org/static/uploads/01.jpg

ModernMech 3 hours ago

It's recent enough that people living today knew former slaves. That's not ancient history at all, so I think the comparison is not good. I'm sure Brazil also has to deal with fallout of their practices, but I don't see how it changes how the fallout of US slavery impacts the US.

0xDEAFBEAD 2 hours ago

>It's recent enough that people living today knew a slave.

Slavery ended in 1865. That's 161 years ago. So maybe there are a few modern 80-year-olds who interacted with 80-year-old former slaves when the modern 80-year-olds were infants. Those 80-year-old former slaves would themselves have no memory of slavery since it would've ended before they could form memories. And the modern 80-year-olds would have no memory of the interaction, since they themselves were infants when the interaction happened.

In other words: There aren't very many of these people, and it's unclear if most of them would count.

You know something which happened more recently in the US than slavery? Prohibition. A trendy, self-righteous moral crusade which didn't accomplish what it set out to achieve, and ended up creating a bunch of problems instead.

I think Prohibition is a pretty good template for understanding the form and tendencies of modern left-wing activist movements. But--at least reducing alcoholism was a good cause that we had a shot at doing something about! Short of inventing a time machine, crusading against slavery from centuries ago seems rather pointless. That's not a problem for activists whose primary goal is to be trendy and self-righteous, of course.

ModernMech an hour ago

That's not the point, it's that people who were slaves died in a time when color TVs existed. This woman died in 1964! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_J._Cooper

That's not long enough ago to call it ancient history.

hackernud3s 2 hours ago

I think you need to check the math on that. Knew a former slave maybe?

ModernMech an hour ago

Yes right indeed, edited.

otterley 3 hours ago

What’s your angle here, exactly? I don’t get it.

creato 2 hours ago

That the issue of slavery has weak explanatory power for what is happening today.

otterley 2 hours ago

I didn’t ask you. But since you chose to get involved: do you believe there is no lasting impact or consequences resulting from slavery in the USA?

WalterBright 14 minutes ago

Pretty much everything that has happened in the past has consequences today. It's the butterfly effect.

Slavery has existed as far back as history. The idea that people are created equal, and are equal under the law, is very, very new, and that idea has resulted in a great many positive things happening.

0xDEAFBEAD 2 hours ago

I'm anti-Trump. If you tell people "Trump is a corrupt asshole", that has a chance at convincing supporters to abandon him. If you tell people "the US needs a cultural revolution due to events from past centuries", that's what got him elected in the first place.

A good general wouldn't voluntarily shift the battleground to a region where their troops are weak. Political persuasion is no different. The Democratic Party keeps losing because they cling to unpopular positions on cultural issues. If Trump is as bad as you say, prove it to me by showing willingness to strategically cede ground on a few issues in order to win more voters.

otterley 2 hours ago

I’m generally aligned with your point, but I also don’t think the official position of the Democratic Party is that we need a cultural revolution, nor do I observe most Democrats feel that way.

What I do see is media and politicians on the Right characterizing extreme positions held by a minority of folks on the far Left as though they are adopted by the entire Left, and that weak uncritical minds on the Right believe that nonsense. Rush Limbaugh pioneered this technique to profit himself, and Trump gave him a fucking Presidential Medal of Freedom in his first term.

0xDEAFBEAD 2 hours ago

I think you're somewhat underestimating how effectively the far-left minority has scared others into silence. Anyways, I do what I can to push back against them when they say things which seem wacky to me, as in this instance.

Maybe I should work harder to make my actual views clear. I added a few sentences to the end of my original comment in this thread: "I don't think this is a slavery thing. Trump just sucks." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49572347

tw04 2 hours ago

And does Brazil have their own 13th amendment that allows them to use prison labor as their modern slave workforce?

0xDEAFBEAD 2 hours ago

"Around the world, at least eleven million people are imprisoned, either pre-trial or following conviction. Most sentenced prisoners will work while in custody...

...

Most countries’ legal systems, however, carve out an exception for prisoner-workers, permitting the state to require them to work—sometimes for no pay, but typically for very low rates of pay.

There are, even so, multiple potential benefits to prison work. For example, ICPR’s recent research indicated that prisoners who could not work (when prison regimes around the world were restricted during the COVID-19 pandemic) reported many negative consequences, including to their mental and physical wellbeing. At the minimum, work may mitigate some harmful impacts of imprisonment. At best, it may increase prisoners’ prospects of successful reintegration into society, potentially also benefitting society by reducing recidivism."

https://www.prisonstudies.org/sites/default/files/publicatio...

(emphasis mine)

Here's a photo from a Brazilian prison from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labour#/media/File:Inmat...

tw04 2 hours ago

The question isn’t whether prisoners work in other countries which I’m confident you know and dodged.

The question is whether the prisons in Brazil are private, and are allowed to sell prison labor FOR A PROFIT, incentivizing both greater incarceration rates, and disincentivizing release.

The answer is no, I’m not aware of ANY other country that allows a private organization to profit off the labor if people imprisoned by the state. At least not any country we would consider 1st world.

It’s absolutely absurd to suggest the current situation is beneficial to anyone but the ruling class and anyone claiming otherwise has never been to prison, never had a relative or friend who has been to prison, or is literally a psychopath who lacks basic human empathy.

0xDEAFBEAD 2 hours ago

You're moving the goalposts.

Your comment stated: "And does Brazil have their own 13th amendment that allows them to use prison labor as their modern slave workforce?"

The article I linked states: "Most countries’ legal systems, however, carve out an exception for prisoner-workers, permitting the state to require them to work..."

So my quote directly answers your original concern.

Your new concern is about private prisons. Here's a new quote from the article which addresses your new concern:

"Involvement by non-public entities in prison work can take many forms. In most countries including all three of Brazil, the United Kingdom, and the United States, for-profit companies operate entire prisons (or provide services within prisons) under government contract. Similarly, the operators of both public and private prisons in all three countries contract with buyers, equipping prison workshops and using prisoner labour to produce goods and services which go on to be sold beyond the prison."

(p. 15, emphasis mine)

So no, the US system doesn't seem to be especially unusual, according to this article.

You're welcome to decry this practice as inhumane, btw. I just don't think it is some sort of skeleton key which will help us understand every aspect of US politics.

Der_Einzige 2 hours ago

De facto there’s hardly rule of law there so if you piss off the wrong people yes.

wahern an hour ago

It's called penal labor, and it was and remains widespread around the world. (And, yes, Brazilian law requires mandatory labor for all prisoners.) It wasn't until the middle to late 20th century that countries began to reform penal labor. But it's complicated. Without penal labor you can't force prisoners to, e.g., do laundry or mop floors. Even mandatory community service is a form of penal labor, and you can still find that in some Western European countries.

The norm now is to require a wage for mandatory labor, but of course often it's just a pittance. (Only 6 US states have uncompensated labor.) But even when you require minimum wage, many criminals owe restitution, so it could be and is taken away again.

Many US states have penal labor systems just like in Europe, that is nominally opt out, mandatory wages, etc, but at the end of the day it's always open to accusations of coercion and claims of "slavery".

The rhetoric around the 13th Amendment is exactly why we're in the situation we are now politically. Everything is equivocated to maximize rhetorical impact. Every unethical thing a politician does is "corruption", so when you get open and egregious corruption as with Trump, people can't discriminate and assume it's all the same.

Was penal labor abused to roll back the clock on abolition? Yes. Is penal labor abused today? Yes. But calling it slavery, drawing parallels to chattel slavery, is just irresponsible.

dataflow 3 hours ago

You don't seem to believe that something like generational wealth makes much of a difference?

hackernud3s 2 hours ago

It makes a difference at a demographics level but I don't think that's what we're discussing here.

TheOtherHobbes 2 hours ago

Some people believe they have a right to land based on claims from millennia ago.

I suppose you could question their sanity, but the point stands - history has a short memory, and a few generations are nothing.

Especially when the after-effects of slavery, including segregation, disenfranchisement through gerrymandering and for-profit imprisonment, and other forms of continuing violence, are still live issues today.

tstrimple 2 hours ago

Sounds like you’re completely ignorant to US history post civil war. You seem to know nothing about the daughters of the confederacy. Know nothing about segregation and Jim Crow. You have no idea that conservatives fight to this day to maintain monuments to literal traitors to the country. Or that they still routinely fly the flag of traitors to the country. Or more likely you do know about all of that and agree with it and just want to white wash conservative history in the US.

hackernud3s 2 hours ago

Comparing MAGA to Nazis is a bit much, and I would argue that this kind of hyperbole is a better example of how we got here.

mjmsmith 2 hours ago

True, in the sense that right wing extremists apparently have no agency and no responsibility for their actions or beliefs.

hackernud3s an hour ago

I was thinking more that Nazi's rounded up and gassed a million Jews. So I'm not in a forgiving mood if you're making joking comparisons or trying to be cute.

CyberDildonics 2 hours ago

It's not comprehensible without understanding that huge amounts of people are watching straight up lies and propaganda all day every day for their 'news'.

bawolff 2 hours ago

People who feel lost and disaffected would rather see the whole thing burn down than continue with the status quo even if it is objectively worse for them.

And its clearly been building for a while. Trump and Obama are about as opposite as possible, but they both won by campaigning on "change".

This is true in most political systems. Its how most revolutions start. The commoner is always screwed but they still support them.

I dont think america is all that exceptional. All sides just see it through their filter bubble and miss the forest for the trees.

dimgl 2 hours ago

I think this whole "that half" and "this half" thing makes it significantly harder to hold people in the government accountable. I know plenty of conservative people who think the corruption in the government is out of control.

atmavatar an hour ago

Do they act on their beliefs or merely parrot them?

I ask because I've known people who were shocked at what took place 2021-01-06 but who proudly voted to re-elect Trump.

Today isn't much different: talk to a conservative voter who complains about the tariffs, Iran war, etc. and ask them whether it would be enough for them to vote Democrat, and the answer is near universally no. Lots of people have performative outrage because they're supposed to be outraged at what's going on, but the truth is that there's no line the Republican party can cross which would make them switch votes. Exceptions to this rule are still few and far between as far as I can gather.

esalman an hour ago

Well friend, the current political climate in America might be unprecedented, but is not unique. As someone who lived under a mix of military, monarchy, psudo-democratic and democratic governments for first 30 years of my life, I've seen this played out many times before.

2OEH8eoCRo0 5 hours ago

It's more like a third.

> 35% approve, 61% disapprove, 5% not sure

https://www.economist.com/interactive/trump-approval-tracker

kolanos 4 hours ago

> The national favorability rating for the Democratic Party sits around 39% to 41% favorable, with unfavorable ratings ranging from 48% to 54% across recent mid-2026 polls. [0]

And Congress as a whole...

> The approval rating for the U.S. Congress stands at 10%, while disapproval has climbed to 86%, according to data from Gallup. [1]

So not sure what this is really telling us?

[0]: https://fiftyplusone.news/polls/favorability/democratic-part... [1]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/708722/disapproval-congress-tie...

matthewdgreen 4 hours ago

People hate Congress but love their Congressperson. It's even got a name: Fenno's paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenno%27s_paradox

Diffuse organizations like "Congress" or "the party" aren't what you're voting for. Unfortunately Congress really does take it on the chin for the actions of the President in midterms, because that's very recognizable and personalized, and partisan votes (or just staying home) are the only lever people have to express displeasure.

vjvjvjvjghv 3 hours ago

"People hate Congress but love their Congressperson. "

I honestly think most Congress people want to do good for the country. But the system has become totally dysfunctional making it basically impossible to really work on issues. The influence of money is just too much. To me this goes hand in hand with the rising inequality that gives a few people at the top outsized influence. Super PACs don't even have to deploy their money anymore. The simple threat is already enough to bring most Congress people in line if they want to keep their job.

roenxi 2 hours ago

> I honestly think most Congress people want to do good for the country.

That seems wildly unlikely. Wouldn't there be evidence for it by now? Over the last decades there have been scant murmurs of the US congress sitting down and taking a serious look at what might be good for a country. I'm happy to say that the root cause is a voting public in the US (everywhere, really) rewarding unprincipled liars and punishing principled politicians. But the outcome is that the US Congress is full of unprincipled liars who have little regard for the good of the country, because that would be a principle that gets in the way of political expediency.

The system isn't some abstract concept foisted upon them from on high. They control it. There are some very high-level constraints on them that are all-weather good ideas and apart from that it is a free-for-all. The reason the system is dysfunctional is because that suits the congresspeople.

a34729t 23 minutes ago

Most of the US airforce is executive transport. Clearly you dont actually know people higher up in government. As someone who dated a very high up state legislator in my state said: She totally doesnt care cause she doesnt suffer the consequences. And at the congressional level it is again a level apart. Michal Crichton has a name for this, I think!

Panzer04 an hour ago

People don't feel like they are well-represented by either party.

They may like some republican stances (say, reduced regulations and welfare spending), but despise others (Trump, wars, anti-renewable). Meanwhile they might like some democrat stances (Inclusivity, environment), but not others (high spending, rent controls, etc).

So you're stuck between a rock and a hard place where there's no good way to express your desires. I can totally understand not wanting to vote in such an environment, and disliking the government no matter what. You can't get your specific views represented because everything has been collapsed into two broad camps that average out - and as lots of research shows, no one is truly average.

scrubs 4 hours ago

That 35% will change their tune if it screws their stuff up. Trump et al is great in the large unless he's your business partner or boss screwing your money and life up, hitting on your wife or daughter, owes you money etc. Cheap symbolism is appealing in a fog only, not in your face.

tstrimple 3 hours ago

I think you’re underestimating the true believers. Plenty of conservatives are willing to suffer if they think it makes others suffer more. See Dying of Whiteness.

BLKNSLVR 5 hours ago

Part of the problem with the open brazenness of the corruption is that the populace of the country will follow the lead. The rot will spread far and wide if it is seen that there is no consequence.

cucumber3732842 4 hours ago

What rots will fall down.

Now, if you had some grand master plan to use some part of the federal government to stomp some people in some state for doing it wrong this is probably bad for you. But on a 30-40yr timeline it'll probably just mean a cycle of the feds doing less and the states doing more and the diversity that comes with that.

Like we'll all screech about the EPA revoking this or the DOT ceasing to do that but whatever those policies are, if people want them they will be picked up by the states. In most cases it'll probably be 40-something states continuing to do whatever it was or 40-something states saying that was stupid all along and stopping immediately.

Basically the sky isn't falling.

autoexec 4 hours ago

The EPA is a good example of why this is so bad. Even if 90% of the states pass rules to protect the air and water it takes only a small number of states not following environmental regulations to cause a massive amount of harm to air and water quality and the effects of that can be felt in other states.

It also hurts businesses when they suddenly find themselves forced to follow an inconsistent/conflicting patchwork of state laws instead of a single federal law.

That said, it's still encouraging to see states picking up the slack and passing laws to protect their residents, even though I can't help but feel bad for people who become stuck in states where the government doesn't care about them. I hope that people will be begin to flee states where the government chooses to put corporate profits above the well-being of the public or wants to strip them of their rights, but realistically there will be many people who can't afford to move or who feel compelled to stay because of ties to their friends, family, and community.

cucumber3732842 4 hours ago

You're only looking at the glass half empty side of things.

The environment in the US is very diverse so why is it federally regulated to the degree it is?

Not having to put up with rules that make sense in the arid plains or western deserts is gonna be a huge boon to everyone east of the Mississippi.

The "consistency" argument is like 99% red herring. There's already a huge patchwork because the way federal agencies work is the states do most of the enforcing so you have 50 states worth of precedents and political whims to keep track of. If we're gonna suffer that patchwork it should at least work for the state as they want it rather than just be various flavors of spin on federal rules nobody fully agrees with.

You can run this sort of exercise with just about every federal agency. Stuff like the FRA, DOT and other things where the literal subject matter is flagrantly interstate are where this sort of thing is least true.

bigfatkitten 3 hours ago

> The environment in the US is very diverse so why is it federally regulated to the degree it is?

Because there’s relatively little need for diversity. Dumping toxic waste into river systems is as bad in Oregon as it is in Florida. Things that genuinely need local management (e.g. wildlife) can be managed locally.

cucumber3732842 3 hours ago

You are ignorant of how much of what the federal agencies do is create rules and recommendations and best practices and then tell the states they don't qualify for grant bucks if they don't implement somme amount of all of it.

This is where most of the dysfunction comes from, not the classification of what is or isn't a pollutant. Because this is how you get some water rich municipality in the southeast having to adopt stupid rules they don't even want based on some guidelines that were written to be compatible with the water poor west.

There'd be a ton less people who are categorically opposed to the federal agencies if not for this sort of thing. And it goes for most agencies, not just the EPA.

doubleg72 2 hours ago

The irony of calling someone ignorant because they can't conceptualize how this fantasy world in your imagination operates...

NewJazz 2 hours ago

Most of north dakota, south dakota, montana, wyoming, idaho, eastern Washington, and oregon are a very similar set of ecosystems.

m4rtink 4 hours ago

Yeah, just look at the eastern block countries - corruption was everywhere and considered totally normal. So much that it eventually brought the whole thing down.

But it still left a deep mark on people - people who grew up under the old regime still considered it normal to bring gifts (usually alcohol in some form) when visiting doctors - the idea being it would be rude not to!

This is having real consequences - I saw an interview with a doctor, where he showed the reports a big closet, full of alcohol from these gifts.

That was from just the last week. He also mentions colleagues with tendencies for alcoholism dying from this...

equality_1138 28 minutes ago

I find this optimistic, suggesting that the rot can be stopped with some consequence? The rotten "populace" in the country seem to love their corrupt politicians, and it's because they're corrupt too. Meritocracy began it's slow death with the banking bailouts.

dfxm12 5 hours ago

This is putting mildly. The most damning bit might just be that Republican voters saw all the corruption of Trump I and decided they wanted more.

mc32 5 hours ago

When Congress people enrich themselves while serving in office[1] and there's a revolving door from public service into private and we have billions in unaccounted spending, fraud everywhere you look (especially since Covid), it's no surprise people feel upset by corruption.

My hope is we will, one day, have an administration that roots it out using modern fraud detection, gets rid of waste, shuts down non-profits that funnel monies to their founders (anything where "overheard" is over 50%), stops insider trading amongst politicians and government workers, but I don't see them voting against their greed.

[1]https://ballotpedia.org/Changes_in_Net_Worth_of_U.S._Senator...

dangjc 3 hours ago

The Supreme Court opened the doors to this with Citizens United. You can’t expect one party to unilaterally disarm while another rakes in hundreds of millions. We all just need to come together and agree on a constitutional amendment to end this.

DivingForGold 2 hours ago

The US has moved down to 29th. I can recall when they were 16th.

https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2025

hakunin 2 hours ago

Saying “US corruption isn’t new” is a truism. There are probably isolated incidents, and many unproven theories, but everyone is quick to agree with this statement because it’s a common feeling everyone has now for some reason. The reality of corruption is likely much smaller and more boring than people think.

What we’re witnessing now is what should be called corruption. That corruption that everyone has been screaming for years. But finally real.

Remember, the job of these people’s propaganda is not to say that they’re better than the other side. It’s to say that they’re all the same. That’s it. And when you claim that this corruption is just a continuation of previous corruption, just bigger, and not a difference between essentially not having and having corruption (there’s always some small percentage of corruption, just like any crime) is essentially sweeping for them. It’s repeating their talking points.

colordrops an hour ago

You haven't been paying attention and digging into unfiltered sources if you think significant corruption is a new thing in the US.

hatsix an hour ago

You haven't read his comment if you think that's what he said

dd8601fn an hour ago

It’s so, so much worse now.

Like everyone here said, they just don’t even care about being “caught”. Not ten years ago most of this stuff would likely end a career or land you in prison.

Now it’s just, “So what? Nobody can do anything.”

It’s not better that the corruption is blatant. They’re rubbing our faces in it, and not the least bit concerned about consequences. The message is clear… there aren’t any, anymore.

And the most insulting was how they telegraphed it all. Accuse people of things they clearly didn’t do… and then actually do all those things.

LastTrain an hour ago

You are partially right. We used to collectively throw people out when they were exposed as corrupt. Now it works like this: Republicans get called out by Democrats, Democrats get called out by Republicans and Democrats. And if that goes on long enough Democrats will start overlooking their own transgressions, I see that starting already.

ozgrakkurt 7 minutes ago

It is perplexing how similar it looks when a stupid person who is elected by a stupid base is directing a country.

The difference between people doing corruption before and Trump is that the other people had a "legit" lifestyle and worldview but did corruption as a side thing. An ignorant business person like Trump has corruption/intimidation/coercion/deception etc. as a lifestyle because someone like him can't live in the world that he is living in without this lifestyle.

Trump isn't really corrupt in the same sense as Obama because they are fundamentally different. You could even say more educated politicians that are able to understand what is going on are more evil.

People won't tolerate evil politicians anymore because they understand they are being robbed by the financial system and aren't getting their piece of the pie. It has to be a break to democracy (war?) or economic reform or Mamdani/Trump style government from now, it is really unthinkable people will keep electing Biden/Hilary/Harris/JD Vance kind of politicians anymore unless there is a big breakthrough in brainwashing

pseudosavant 5 hours ago

Looking at their charts, Democrats and Independents clearly think corruption is up a lot since 2024. But Republicans think corruption is down from 2024. The polarization of the electorate in the U.S. is pretty incredible.

BLKNSLVR 5 hours ago

Their corruption is bad. (Ie. the other party)

I wonder if the split would still be roughly the same if a Democrat was in power at the time of the survey.

Edited to add: Answer seems to be in the article, as pointed out here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49571258

First diagram in the article shows uptick, but since 2010 it's been in the 70-80% range. So it seems pretty party-agnostic.

xirdstl 5 hours ago

Biden was in power for the survey in 2024.

paisawalla 5 hours ago

Per the second chart:

Since 2024, Democrats went from being the most trusting (57%) to the most skeptical (91%), bringing all groups to within 10 points of each other on the question.

This is not a "both sides" situation: Republicans dropped from 87% to 83% after their guy was elected, whereas Democrats nearly 1.5x'd their number of skeptics. There is no universal implication here IMO, this is just Democrats joining the 80-percenters, i.e. everyone

vannevar 4 hours ago

>...Republicans dropped from 87% to 83% after their guy was elected, whereas Democrats nearly 1.5x'd their number of skeptics.

This is not surprising; a big reason that Republican voters were able to justify voting for Trump and open corruption was that they were bombarded with claims that there was a "Biden crime family" in office for four years. No real evidence of that was ever uncovered, but it didn't stop Fox News and every Republican leader from constantly referring to the accusations as if they were true. One the other hand, Trump is openly accepting huge payments from foreign governments, and never even bothered to separate himself from his companies. Republicans were at 87% due to general distrust of government and the rumor of phantom corruption, while Democrats (who tend to be more trusting of government) rose to the same level only on clear evidence of real corruption. The authors don't break it out by parties, but the overall level during Trump's first term is about the same as Biden's. Since the article notes that Republican skepticism is higher in general and more consistent, this implies that Democrats' perception of corruption is much higher in Trump's second term than his first. Which makes sense, the Republican leadership was much more responsible in applying guardrails in the first term than the second. Trump is getting away with a LOT more in his second term.

paisawalla 3 hours ago

Woah! You're never going to believe this, but my opponents' beliefs are also unfounded, arising from their inability to perceive self-serving biases, and in general, their ignorance.

I wonder what else we have in common?

datsci_est_2015 3 hours ago

What’s the implication here? Trump actually isn’t corrupt? Or Biden was actually secretly as corrupt as Trump is?

Or more generally, the current state of affairs is somehow justifiable?

ozozozd 2 hours ago

As long as Biden <or insert new candidate> isn’t squeaky clean, no one on the other side can be blamed with any degree of corruption.

In other words: “I don’t have to do the right thing until everyone else does the right thing.”

do - it’s ok for me to be corrupt - because there is at least one person that’s also corrupt while(len(corrupt) != 0)

In short, they are ok with corruption.

paisawalla an hour ago

The implication is that even if I might agree with you, we ought not be subjecting each other to incoherent rants in lieu of substantive arguments. Just don't say anything, if the only thing you have to say is They Watch Fox News.

Even if you're inclined to believe the conclusions, this should recognizably be a silly rant and I don't want to live in a world where we justify sloppy arguments if we agree with the conclusions. If it triggers your defenses to the point where you can't see that this is a poor rant, it could be instructive to copy/paste it into an LLM and ask for an analysis or some counterarguments.

> Trump actually isn’t corrupt? Or Biden was actually secretly as corrupt as Trump is?

Incredible to me that you could think this is anywhere implied. Maybe you understand something better than I do, but I submit that it's brainrot to think my comment was somehow "Trump is not corrupt and/or Biden is equally corrupt".

However, the question of whose corruption rises to the level where a person is morally suspect if they don't speak out, is one that certainly cuts conveniently, isn't it?

bluefirebrand 13 minutes ago

> Maybe you understand something better than I do, but I submit that it's brainrot to think my comment was somehow "Trump is not corrupt and/or Biden is equally corrupt".

I don't really think you realize how that initial post comes across, because I'm re-reading your previous and struggling to come up with any other interpretation besides "both sides are bad".

If you are intending to say something different than that, maybe try stating it directly rather than sarcastically

vannevar 3 hours ago

>I wonder what else we have in common?

Well, obviously not an appreciation for the distinction between evidence and opinion. The fact is that there is clear, uncontroverted evidence that Donald Trump has profited directly from his presidency, and no clear evidence that Joe Biden did. Not everything is symmetrical in politics, and it's not always "both sides."

lesuorac 3 hours ago

Aren't the beliefs founded though?

There are immigrants who commit crimes. Sure, it's not _every_ Mexican is a rapist and we're probably talking about basis points of basis points here. But it's a foundation.

Hunter Biden did get money from people who wanted access to Joe Biden. Sure, Joe didn't actually help them out. But it's a foundation.

The problem isn't the unfoundedness it's that it's extrapolated beyond what the foundation supports.

nonethewiser a few seconds ago

>Their corruption is bad. (Ie. the other party)

Republicans were at 88 and went to 83. Down a tiny bit but pretty flat overall. The Democrats went from 57->91.

socalgal2 5 hours ago

U.S. Trust in Government Depends Upon Party Control

https://news.gallup.com/poll/697421/trust-government-depends...

vjvjvjvjghv 3 hours ago

Same for supporting issues. If the "other" party proposes something, people are automatically against. As soon as "their" party supports it, they are all in.

The MAHA movement is a good example. If democrats had said something about the problems with high sugar food or additives, republicans would have shouted "nanny state". Now that Kennedy is talking about it, they support it.

dfxm12 5 hours ago

At least they think it's up since 2025. I wonder how this will inform their votes in November...

icegreentea2 4 hours ago

It's not just a question of belief, it's also a question of their information environment. The polarization in the electorate isn't just a question of what people believe, but what information their fed. Unfortunately, information environment -> belief -> environment is forms a strong sustaining feedback loop.

It is also worth pointing out that that 83% of republicans (vs 90% of independents) still believe that the government is widely corrupt. Like given the ~20% "crazy threshold" in basically any type of political polling, 80% of republicans is effectively "every single republican you could ever convince".

I would not lose sleep over polarization in this context.

nonethewiser 2 minutes ago

From 2024 -> 2026

Republican: 88->83

Democrat: 57->91

Republicans barely changed. It's insane than Democrats were so low 2 years ago.

chr15m 2 hours ago

Most democracy measurement projects and indices have shown a decline in democratic performance for the US over the past decade.

EIU reclassified the country from "full democracy" to "flawed democracy" in 2016.

V-Dem went from "liberal democracy" to "electoral democracy" in 2025.

When you have a wide variety of entities measuring the same trend, it is probably broadly correct.

The hope the good citizenry find a fix.

[To be fair the trend is global unfortunately: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/countries-democracies-aut...]

dozerly 42 minutes ago

The US’s democracy has been under fire from foreign nations and corporations for years. It has slowly degraded because of it. What we’re seeing now is the “all at once” portion.

throw0101a 6 hours ago

Even before this new record high, in the previous ~15 years the average seemed to be around 75% (±), which seems… high? I would perhaps understand the US public thinking that (some levels of) government being "incompetent", but not corrupt.

By some measure the US does seem to have 'decent' scores for perception of corruption:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index

* https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2025

Meta: in some ways it seems that the public's perception of government is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. In the US there is a large vein of "government is bad/incompetent/corrupt" and that's apparently what the US often gets. While in (e.g.) Scandinavian countries there appears to be a higher level of trust in government, and the people there tend to elect more competent politicians (?).

wat10000 5 hours ago

I'd guess it comes down to what counts as "the government."

Millions of people work for the federal government, and millions more for state and local governments. Is there widespread corruption among them? I don't think so. And I don't think my countrymen think so either.

But "the government" is often meant as just the very top. The President is corrupt. Big swathes of Congress are corrupt. We have a Supreme Court justice more or less openly accepting bribes. Among that small group, I would be comfortable saying that corruption is widespread.

mswphd 5 hours ago

I (and I'm sure others) would obviously agree. just a smattering of the obvious cases

* for years people have noticed that many members of congress use privileged information to pick stocks.

* lobbying post-Citizen's United has a very decidedly "buying politicians" aspect to it

* a congressman (Menendez) was literally arrested while holding gold bars from a foreign government. he went to prison, but is the only person on this list who has iirc.

* the former mayor of new york (a long-time police offer) was embroiled in a Very Funny, very obviously true corruption scandal for turkish airline tickets. the prosecution against him was dropped for no good reason.

bluefirebrand 7 minutes ago

I think there's probably plenty of minor corruption around. A lot of it takes the form of "I have control over funds and I am going to award contracts to people I'm close to"

Or maybe soft bribery, like government officials being wined and dined by lobbyists. I'm sure that isn't "supposed" to happen, but I'm also pretty sure it happens a lot.

This sort of corruption exists a ton at corporations for sure, so I am hard pressed to think it doesn't happen in government

dfxm12 5 hours ago

This is what a steady diet of conservative, increasingly monopolistic, media does to a populace.

archonis 2 hours ago

I imagine having over a dozen political parties helps with this as well.

swed420 6 hours ago

New High of 45% in U.S. Identify as Political Independents (January 12, 2026)

https://news.gallup.com/poll/700499/new-high-identify-politi...

trentor 6 hours ago

Right on track to be the next Russia. Ironic but also incredibly funny.

FpUser 6 hours ago

He who kills the dragon becomes one.

jeffbee 6 hours ago

An "independent" in America is a person who greatly desires everything Trump is doing but realizes that makes them a bad person and therefore refuses to admit it.

the_gastropod 4 hours ago

I know you’re going to get downvoted to hell, but you’re pretty much spot on. There’s something strangely desirable about being seen as the edgy contrarian “not left, not right” person. But 9 times out of 10, that person has approximately the same incoherent worldview most Trumpists have.

bigstrat2003 3 hours ago

He's not spot on at all, and that's why he's being downvoted. He's examining the world through a false dichotomy of "if you aren't on my side, you support my enemies". But the reality is that most people who consider themselves independent are actually independent and vote for whomever they consider to be the best candidate.

darth_avocado 6 hours ago

Identifying as independents means nothing. 67% of independents in 2018 viewed one party more favorable and were unfavorable to other. In other words, the independents have a partisan lean towards one party and are more likely to vote that way.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/03/14/political-in...

groby_b 6 hours ago

"indepdendent" does not mean "i see all parties as absolutely the same".

It means "I am not firmly affiliated". You still have the ability to make choices on who is a better likely outcome

XorNot 6 hours ago

That only matters of you actually do make different choices. But of course in turn even trying to control for that depends on their being meaningful changes in party platforms between elections.

So I'm pretty content calling it a meaningless measure.

swed420 5 hours ago

Identifying as independent is the first step toward not voting at all (which itself is a type of vote, especially in a rigged system).

So definitely not meaningless. It demonstrates increasing amounts of people are tired of pretending our democracy isn't mostly illusory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniparty

spicymaki 5 hours ago

This is correct. That is why I changed from independent to an actual political party. There is no point, it is highly improbable that I would ever vote for the party that is against my values. The two main US political parties are diametrically opposed.

swed420 5 hours ago

No, they each manufacture consent for capital interests in a race to the bottom for everybody else, using time-tested good cop / bad cop, revolving door corruption, etc.

bigstrat2003 3 hours ago

So, vote for a third party. If you don't actually like the candidate you vote for, you're engaging in political negligence. When I vote, I almost never vote for a Republican or Democrat candidate because they are, by and large, not people I want representing me. So I vote for someone I do want representing me.

amanaplanacanal 2 hours ago

That can work, if you are strategic about it. If your candidate is polling at 5%, you might as well have not voted at all.

Something I read once, probably 50 years ago now: you may not see a candidate you want to vote for, but you will probably see a candidate you want to vote against.

vkou 4 hours ago

Two thirds of those independents will vote MAGA down the ballot to give him a third and fourth term.

xnx 5 hours ago

"Drain the swamp". Everything is projection. What they say about the Democrats is what they are or aspire to be.

etchalon 5 hours ago

I wonder if it's less projection than permission.

They believe that all government is corrupt and thus they're not doing anything wrong by being openly corrupt.

Loughla 5 hours ago

I don't know why you're being down voted. Your statement does seem to be the literal truth.

ozozozd 2 hours ago

I agree.

Though it’s a bit of a self-serving belief, rather than a genuine belief.

MBCook 3 hours ago

I would be really interested in a much, much longer timescale version of the graph. Like 50 to 100 years.

giantg2 5 hours ago

Lots of people here are focused on one guy. But the the article says "widespread". In my experience, much of the corruption is at a local or state level. At the federal level it seems the corruption is mostly related to agencies (GAO reports) and lobbying.

vannevar 4 hours ago

It doesn't seem like they asked about specific levels or branches of government, so presumably the respondents were giving a general impression. And in that case, it's hard to believe that a corrupt President wouldn't strongly influence the response.

0ckpuppet 3 hours ago

usaid gec ngo all federal all exist to facilitate corruption

trashface 4 hours ago

The disparity between Trump and previous presidents on income earned while president is so vast, you need a log scale graph to make it meaningful. Your favorite LLM can generate it for you (except maybe grok, I presume)

jghn 5 hours ago

Unfortunately if one asks "who is the cause of the corruption" you'd see two very strong modes in the data, and therein lies the issue regarding fixing things.

amazingamazing 5 hours ago

> Is corruption widespread throughout the government in this country, or not?

How is corruption defined for the purposes of this survey?

If there is none (I assume there is not), then it is only natural this number go up as the media highlights and propagandizes and highlights all actions taken by all government officials.

rush86999 2 hours ago

It's like everyone knows the dirty truth, but no one wants to do anything about it.

Why? Self-interest has made everyone blind to open corruption.

The worst part is reality hits 3-4 years later, and the big guy is already out and about. Already with his billions, partying in the Caymans.

Welcome to democratic oligarchy!!

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 6 hours ago

If this is the question they asked:

Is corruption widespread throughout the government in this country, or not?

Then that's very open to interpretation. Even if I thought the federal government was not corrupt, but I did think the local or state government was corrupt (or many local governments were, not just my own), I'd answer yes to this question.

They should have broken it down a bit more.

tekla 6 hours ago

Note the numbers between 2010 and 2025 were in the 72% to 79% range if you read the article. So numbers have not actually increased that much.

ProfessorLayton 6 hours ago

2010 was right after the great recession, and after the people that caused it got bailed out by the government.

mswphd 5 hours ago

2010 is also Citizen's United.

lynndotpy 5 hours ago

Think about it as 25% who disagree to only 11. Less than half of the people who thought corruption is not widespread still think so. Further, the US is now the #1 ranked country in corruption.

I think it's more useful to think about the closed operations on the 0% to 100% range. A change of ~75% to 89% does not seem like much, but "only an 18% increase" is not a closed operation, so it's not so meaningful. You'll see this in machine learning, e.g. 70% accuracy to 75% accuracy is not as impressive as 98% to 99%, despite having a larger change.

52-hertz_whale 2 hours ago

4 year smash and grab. Foxes are in the henhouse.

mberning 5 hours ago

The corruption is bad enough at the local level. I can’t even fathom how much theft is going on at the state and federal level. It’s one of the more frustrating things to see how much money you are paying into the system for such meager benefits. We can’t even get sidewalks installed in my area, but the township can certainly give a sweetheart tax break to one of their buddies to build a new gas station.

sublinear 5 hours ago

I'm curious how these polls are conducted. These polls are at least already biased since people self-select. If they're online only, even moreso. If they're only advertised to echo chambers, even moreso.

Anyway, the result may be that the polls are only measuring younger people with nothing better to do. That's interesting but only a record high amongst that subpopulation. I'm fairly certain this is business as usual.

worik an hour ago

So that is 11% who do not read the news, do not know what corruption is or are benefiting

surfmike 6 hours ago

The most blatant recent case is Trump selling early access to his Truth Social posts

https://abcnews.com/Politics/profoundly-corrupt-trump-sued-f...

jimt1234 5 hours ago

Citizens United. Nothing else to say.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC

hackernud3s 2 hours ago

Citizens United is widely considered the event that would cause US corruption to spiral out of control, but there was always the hope that a constitutional amendment could get us out of this.

Neither side ever even attempted it. Every once in a while you get some lip service about small money donations but nobody ever tried to go after the problem at the root in all this time. Think about what that means.

asdff 28 minutes ago

Some local governments are fully designed to be perfect vehicles for corruption by this point. The incentives just lead to it over time as one corrupt prick makes things a little easier for themselves and their ilk to operate without oversight. Things compound over the decades of people drawn to the graft opportunities in local government with their campaigns funded by the beneficiaries of the graft, against little to no opposition.

add-sub-mul-div 6 hours ago

I thought electing an outsider with theretofore no experience nor interest in governing was supposed to break the system in a good way so as to erase the incumbent problems and rebuild with common sense and integrity.

autoexec 6 hours ago

Giving someone without common sense and integrity unchecked power is probably not a good way to obtain common sense and integrity in your government.

netsharc 5 hours ago

Well, that reads like the justification you want to give to yourself after the fact.. the interesting question is what's the real reason...

vannevar 3 hours ago

The problem with government was that wealthy charlatans were rigging the system in their own favor. Naturally, the solution was to put a wealthy charlatan in charge of the whole thing and eliminate the middle man.

java-man 7 hours ago

Who are these 11%?

slater 7 hours ago

The ones smiling and holding "their" ladders

actionfromafar 6 hours ago

And the ones who believes Mr Trump drained the swamp.

slater 5 hours ago

[they-are-the-same-picture-dot-gif]

dmix 6 hours ago

Government workers

bigstrat2003 3 hours ago

I wasn't surveyed but I would be part of that group. I believe the government has been corrupt for as long as I've been alive, if not longer. I also believe that it is not actually worse now than in the past. And contrary to what many uncharitable people in this thread claim, I am equally unhappy no matter which party backs the crooks in power. I just want a government that serves me, and I haven't had that in my 41 years on this earth.

CyberDildonics 2 hours ago

Interesting that so far I don't see any comments about the epstein files and half of them not being released even under congressional order, let alone congress now being recessed for two weeks to avoid another vote for a second eptein transparency act.

chris_wot 5 hours ago

I’m not an American. Those not American are frankly gobsmacked that U.S. citizens voted the current President in a second time. You all literally saw what he did in his first term!

chronc7403 5 hours ago

> You all literally saw what he did in his first term!

Yeah, he stopped US military from defending other countries for free.

Soft power doesn’t pay your rent/mortgage.

techblueberry 5 hours ago

Soft power is _literally_ what pays your rent and mortgage.

0xDEAFBEAD 3 hours ago

Switzerland has much more soft power than the US, due to Switzerland avoiding military entanglements.

0xDEAFBEAD 3 hours ago

Can people on HN stop flagging comments they disagree with which don't violate the guidelines? It's getting tiresome.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

slater 3 hours ago

From that very same link:

"Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."

0xDEAFBEAD 3 hours ago

Vote however you want, but I'm sick of people abusing the flag feature.

shusaku 2 hours ago

Throw away accounts dropping political talking points deserve to be flagged.

chronc7403 15 minutes ago

> Throw away accounts dropping political talking points deserve to be flagged.

If you’re American, make sure to vote in next election

If you’re not, tell your country’s representatives how you feel.

Let the market decide.

Unless you think, your opinion is more valid than the market.

HeDoesntKnow 4 minutes ago

Dumb comment by a dumb person.

Kill yourself slater

Every time I have read a comment of yours over the years it has been the dumbest shit I’ve ever seen

imoverclocked 4 hours ago

> You all literally saw what he did in his first term!

False, unfortunately. Disparate news outlets covered events very differently and folks watching pro-Trump outlets (or only listening to friends who do) through the first term were under the impression that he did an excellent job. They may even still believe that the 2020 election was actually stolen. Heck, there are depositions this year while vetting appointees who refuse to admit (despite all available evidence) that the 2020 election was valid.

stevenwoo 3 hours ago

I live in California and even though Trump lost here he still got 1/4 to 1/2 the vote even in the coastal areas so a lot of people one might work with support Trump - there’s always an undercurrent of racist dog whistles in GOP campaigns that with Trump became daily broadcasts on social media and conservative news sources - these MAGA hear it and believe in that and the ones I’ve talked to are like cultists - they won’t believe any other evidence to the contrary and they like the simple message and the messenger - others are to blame and he can fix it.

jmyeet 4 hours ago

In many countries around the world, corruption is a huge problem. But pretty much everywhere it happens there's a surface-level denial or attempt to hide it. If you're Putin or Erdogan, for example, you'll have children who get beneficial contracts and there's layers of obfuscation.

So there are three things that are scary about Trump's corruption:

1. It's so brazen and on a scale rarely seen. Apparently he's made $2 billion since coming back into office and he does so openly. Pardons are for sale. Truth Social has a feature to pay to get early access to posts to trade on, basically. There are crypto rug pulls. The list goes on;

2. A third of the population simply doesn't care and will defend it no matter what; and

3. He'll never be held accountable by any future administration. This is the worst part. If this happened in China, he'd go to prison and his assets would be seized. This would extend to his family and their assets. Just look at Hui Ya Kan [1].

The US just does not punish the wealthy. Look at the Sacklers and Purdue. There's clear evidence they hid the fact that Oxycontin was addictive despite their public claims and they have a large amount of responsibility for the opioid crisis. In a just world, they would all die penniless in 6x8 foot grey prison cells. And who went to prison for the 2008 subprime crisis? Oh, that's right. Nobody.

This also extends to the powerful. George W. Bush had an illegal torture program. Who went to prison for it? Only 1 guy: the whistleblower John Kiriakou for talking about it.

The Supreme Court is utterly corrupt. Anthony Kennedy allegedly traded his retirement for a job for his son. John Roberts's wife makes tens of millions in headhunting fees for finding lawyers to argue before teh Supreme Court. Clarence Thomas is just one bribe after another.

The entire government is captured by people who want to get rich by betraying their country to the ultra-wealthy.

[1]: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-evergrande-founder...