Brooks: ‘I Can’t Even Imagine’ Massively Distrusting Government, But it ‘Probably Is Justified’

On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks stated that while deep distrust of the government “probably is justified” by the government’s behavior, looking at D.C.’s “glorious and inspiring buildings, and thinking, that’s full of monsters, all that’s illegitimate, it’s all a fraud. To me, I can’t even imagine that mindset, to be honest.”

Brooks said, “Well, to me, the number one most important statistic in my life covering this stuff has been, two generations ago, you asked people, do you trust government to do the right thing most of the time? And 75% said, yes. And now, what is it, 12%, 19%? It bounces around, but it’s phenomenally low. And so, imagine walking around the city where I live in Washington, D.C., looking at all — what I think of as glorious and inspiring buildings, and thinking, that’s full of monsters, all that’s illegitimate, it’s all a fraud. To me, I can’t even imagine that mindset, to be honest. But it is a mindset that a lot of people have, and, frankly, because of things that have happened over the last 30 or 40 years, a lot of people feel is justified. It probably is justified, because of the failures of a lot of things that have happened in this country over that time.”

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