[anm89]

It's hard to say either way without getting into polling data but anecdotally, I would say the amount of people whos issue with American politics is that they trust both parties so much that they can't decide who they like so they settle for the middle is many orders of magnitude smaller than the number of people whose primary issue is that they feel a general sense of distrust with all of the parties.

[reedjosh]

I agree and imagine that the overwhelming majority of people do

> feel a general sense of distrust with all of the parties.

Yet our system only allows for `pick red or blue`. In this case the control of the minority by the majority on what are incredibly complex topics is filtered down to a binary decision.

In what world is our current system reasonable!?

Our current system is a tyrannical mess, and it's no surprise everyone is polarized to the max under it.

[cwkoss]

You may be right about orders of magnitude, but I think there is an important distinction to the relative loudness of these two groups though.

There is a large silent majority of people who distrust both parties and ignores and avoid politics.

However I think the "trusts both" group tends to be overrepresented in the media, government and political classes because it has utility to them: hard to work with or get interviews or jobs with politicians that you've called disingenuous or bought by special interests - even when it is clearly the case.

I think there is a breed of people who watch the West Wing and see it as a utopian possible reality ("Federalists"?) and they prioritize the power and respectability of the state as more important than the results of political actions. I believe these people self-sort into these roles and are able to advance in these roles more easily because of this ideology.