Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by cwkoss 1832 days ago
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.