Should You Trust What Your Government Tells You?

This is the most important a citizen can ask, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a comforting one. The answer is: no, you should not extend unconditional trust to either your federal or Idaho state government but the more useful question is not whether to trust, but how to verify.

The Numbers Tell a Grim Story: The erosion of public trust is not paranoia; it is a documented, decades-long collapse. In 1958, 73% of Americans trusted the federal government to do the right thing almost always or most of the time. Today, that number sits near historic lows. In a spring 2024 survey, only 22% of U.S. adults said they trust the federal government to do the right thing just about always or most of the time. In 2023, that figure had dropped to 16%—among the lowest in more than six decades of polling. Pew Research Center The Pew Charitable Trusts

State governments fare somewhat better, but not by much. According to Gallup, 59% of respondents trusted their state government to handle state problems—compared to just 37% who trusted the federal government to solve domestic problems. That gap is meaningful: the closer government is to you, the more accountable it tends to feel. But “more trusted” is not the same as “trustworthy.” National Academy of Public Administration

The Federal Government Has Lied Repeatedly and Consequentially

This is not a matter of interpretation. There is a documented historical record.

Last week on the Kevin Miller Show 580KIDO I talked about “The fictitious Gulf of Tonkin” incident and how I copied the communications between the Maddox and CINCPACFLT in August 1964 while serving in the Navy. This incident which never actually took place was used to get Congress to approve the Vietnam War without declaring war. So were the massive falsehoods detailed in the Pentagon Papers, which revealed a war perpetuated to maintain a mirage of “credibility.” And so were the intelligence findings used to justify the Iraq War. In each case, the machinery of government and not a single rogue official produced and sustained the deceptions. Multiple administrations, agencies, and departments all participated. Knight First Amendment Institute

Public outrage over government lies about Vietnam contributed to Lyndon Johnson’s 1968 decision not to seek reelection. The public’s disapproval of lies to cover up Watergate helped lead to Nixon’s 1974 resignation. Accountability happened but only after years of deception and at enormous human cost. The Conversation

More recently, in the national security arena, the FBI submitted an extensive brief containing what a federal judge found to be “blatantly false” statements about the nature and number of documents kept secret. After the court confronted the government about the lies, the government defended its conduct, claiming authority to lie to both the public and the courts even about the fact that it was keeping information secret. ACLU of Southern California

These are not fringe claims. They are documented through court records, declassified documents, and congressional investigations.

Why do Institutions Lie: It’s the Structure, Not Just the People: Here is the most important thing to understand: government deception is not primarily a product of uniquely corrupt individuals. It is a product of structural conditions that seem to persist regardless of who holds office.

There are Three forces that drive it:

Information asymmetry. Government agencies know vastly more about what they are doing than the citizens they serve. This gap is not accidental it is baked into how large bureaucracies operate. The agencies that know the most have the least incentive to share it.

Self-preservation. As with all structures and agencies, governmental establishments tend to grow and develop a culture of their own. Institutions tend to protect themselves. Admitting failure, wrongdoing, or uncertainty threatens the institution’s budget, authority, and personnel. The incentive to conceal bad news is structural, not personal. nih

Accountability diffusion. When something goes wrong in a large bureaucracy, responsibility can be spread across so many offices, agencies, and officials that no single actor is ever held accountable. This is not an accident of scale it is a feature that protects the system from correction. As scholar Hannah Arendt observed, presidents are wholly reliant on their advisers for factual information, which makes the president “an ideal victim of complete manipulation.” Standing by a falsehood after it has been publicly and persuasively debunked converts a mere mistake into a lie by omission. Knight First Amendment Institute

The implication is uncomfortable but important: replace any given official with someone else, and the same structural pressures apply. Deception is not a Democrat or Republican problem. It is an institutional problem.

What About Idaho Specifically? Idaho state government operates under the same structural pressures, though at smaller scale. The closer proximity to voters creates some accountability that the federal government lacks but it also creates its own form of opacity. State legislatures operate with far less press scrutiny than Congress. Budget processes, agency decisions, and regulatory choices happen with minimal public visibility. When fewer journalists who are watching, the structural incentive to be forthcoming weakens while many publications now a days tend to have biases.

Idaho is not unique in this. Across a wide range of countries, there is higher trust in local governments than in national governments but higher trust reflects proximity and familiarity, not necessarily greater honesty. It means citizens feel more heard, not that they are being told more truth. National Academy of Public Administration

So, What Should You Actually Do? The answer is not to assume everything government tells you is false because that is as intellectually lazy as assuming everything is true. The answer is to calibrate your skepticism with active verification tools.

Whistleblowers, and independent press along with the Freedom of Information Act remain among the most important mechanisms for uncovering government falsehoods. These tools with persistent pushback from other government officials, the press, and the people themselves are the realistic check on institutional deception. The Conversation

Practically, this means:

• Distinguish between categories of government claims. Routine administrative information (your tax return was processed, the road closes Friday) has little motive for distortion. Claims that justify expanding government power, spending, or military action deserve maximum scrutiny.
• Follow primary sources, not press releases. Court documents, FOIA releases, legislative records, and inspector general reports carry far more credibility than any agency communications designed for public consumption.
• Watch what government does, not what it says. Budget appropriations, actual votes, regulatory filings, and enforcement patterns are harder to fake than press conferences and political rhetoric which we get a lot of these days.
• Treat your skepticism as bipartisan. Trust in government shifts sharply based on which party controls the presidency. Republicans’ confidence in the executive branch rose 83 percentage points after the 2024 election, while Democrats’ fell by 56 to 78 points. This pattern reveals that most “distrust” is actually partisan grievance, not principled scrutiny. Real skepticism doesn’t take a party break. Gallup
• Use oversight institutions. Idaho’s Legislature, inspector general offices, and the press however thin on the ground exist precisely to catch what the executive branch conceals.

In Conclusion: Governments lie and this should not come as a surprise to anyone. Please keep in mind that governments can’t lie, nor can they tell the truth. Governments don’t speak at all its the people who speak. Those people are operating inside institutions with powerful incentives to protect themselves, defer bad news, and frame failures as successes. Knight First Amendment Institute

We should notice the patterns and that they crosse party lines and apply at every level of government. The appropriate response should not be cynicism as cynicism is passive and produces nothing. The appropriate response is informed, persistent, tool-equipped skepticism: trust claims provisionally, verify through primary sources, and hold both parties to the same standard.

The citizens who do that work are the only reliable check on the institutions that serve them.

“We Get the Government We Deserve”.