What is the objective in saying that the USG is the shiniest turd of the bunch? What is you told you that the USG has, over the course of its relatively short history, destabilized and created power vacuums and installed puppet governments in countless countries?

There's no divisiveness to fall for. The public's loss of trust is legitimate and if anything, calling it KGB psyops propaganda is rich.. I suppose you think America doesn't engage in the exact same tactics?

That maybe true, but I deeply believe that currently western governments are generally least corrupt that they have ever been historically. In the 1920s the US army was basically a mercenary force for hire by large banks and corporations. In Latin America whenever the Citi bank wanted to extract unpaid debts or the United Fruit wanted to suppress labor rights movements they just had to call the state department. The largely forgotten occupation of Haiti more resembles the Belgian Congo than the 2003 war in Iraq. Let’s not even get in into wtf was happening in Europe or European colonies.

While the road itself might be quite bumpy, the general situation now is much better than it was in the 1980’s, 50’s, 30’s etc. And I don’t see any reasons to believe this trend will change significantly in the future.

America is not less corrupt than before. It has concentrated its corruption upward, making it more wholesale and less retail, and more inward-facing, and more resistant to correction. The US is today rivalled only by China in its degree and depth of corruption. "Wholesale" means tied into institutions, and not mainly exercised by individuals.

Other countries, like Russia, India, Brazil, or Nigeria, might like to be more corrupt than those, but just can't swing it. There is not enough money in play in their spheres.

Some evidence for either side of this debate will be interesting :-)

The best I have is here https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2021 but that does not seem to go far enough back

I think you might underestimating how bad things were in the past. For instance if Amazon warehouse workers in Colombia decided to form an union and strike for better working conditions, could Jeff Bezos call the secretary of state and ask him to threaten Colombia that US will invade if the Colombians don’t sort out their liberal/socialist problem? Hard to imagine right? But the exact same situation happened in 1928 with another famous company. Possible thousands of workers, women and children were murdered. I’ll quote one of the telegrams sent by the US ambassador:

“ I have the honor to report that the Bogotá representative of the United Fruit Company told me yesterday that the total number of strikers killed by the Colombian military exceeded 1000.”

‘ The US is today rivalled only by China in its degree and depth of corruption.’

Really? I mean you really believe that US is more corrupt than Russia where Yeltsin and Putin parceled off most of the resource extraction industry to their oligarch buddies (Putin also added his ex KGB colleagues) in exchange for political support?

See, what you describe is retail corruption. Small potatoes.

As I said, Russia would like to be as corrupt as the US, but is not powerful enough to be. They had to invade two neighboring countries, and more than once, to get paid any attention.

Cynical "both-sideism" is good for nothing.

"Loss of trust" is reductionism. Funny how most people who call about "loss of trust" somehow trust the comedic channel called Fox News. Reasonable people can trust but verify and question channels

Of course this is not one sided politically, we have people like Chomsky that make a sport of saying how the US is "the worse country in the world" while living in probably one of the few countries where such discourse would be tolerated.

While the US has several problems most people don't know how good they have in living in a democracy. A flawed one for sure, but a democracy

The cynicism is fueled by opinions like yours that present a false dichotomy of "western democracy (implied as the gold standard) or anything else (implied as garbage)". This is pure western exceptionalism. The only reason you think your "flawed democracy" bubble is as good as it is is due to the fact that your foreign policy espouses anything BUT democracy, and in its continual aggressions is able to sustain this garden of eden illusion on its citizens. When you see other countries' foreign policies as barbaric and backwards, you get the impression that your country is great. But you do not get to experience your own foreign policy. That is the force of propaganda at work.

Cynics perhaps understand this and think instead outside of the dichotomy. Maybe we can do much better, and the forces in the way of that are powerful --hence the cynicism.

> yours that present a false dichotomy of "western democracy... or anything else"

You won't find that in what I wrote. Especially since there are many different ways of government.

But I won't support sham elections, biased systems (add a special note for gerrymandering and the electoral college here)

> What if I told you that all governments are similarly corrupt, and that the USG (arguably, Western governments in general) is one of the least corrupt by reasonably objective measures.

Then I'd believe you and say, as I kinda tried to in my comment, that it's to the credit of US citizens that they still hold that government to the highest of standards.