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Roachboy is right in pointing out that the thesis of this thread is ill-defined. There are as many reasons for mistrust of the "government" as there are citizens. Some people don't trust the police, others the IRS. What does an environmental activist's distrust of Bush's EPA have to do with a UFO theorists anti-Air Force ramblings? You can talk about broad social trends, but I was under the impression that we were focusing on historical "realities."
What, exactly, are we talking about here? Let's here some examples. Some posters mentioned "poverty," so does that mean the poor's traditional distrust of government? Artelevision's earlier mention of the November elections and the lack of praise for the Bush administration leads me to think that he is obliquely referring to the recent arguments about "irrational" citizens who "hate" Bush. If so, I must say that I find it a bit unreasonable to require me to praise a politician who seems to stand at polar opposites to 99% my beliefs, beliefs that were formed long before Bush came into office.
Art goes on to denigrate the idea of the "well-informed citizenry." Well, if a well-informed citizenry is crucial to the proper functioning of a democracy, doesn't it stand to reason that the lack of one produces an unhealthy democracy? To be frank, the idea that government should operate in secret is an unamerican one. Thomas Jefferson wrote that "the price of freedom is eternal vigilance." How are citizens supposed to make a reasonable estimate of the value of their government if they are not privy to the details of it's operation? I also find the notion that the government should always be trusted a naive one that fails to take into account the fluid nature of democracy. Yes, checks and balances exist to mantain a baseline of functional democracy, but such mechanisms can be circumvented or removed entirely. Witness the ballooning power of the executive this and last century. It says in the Constitution that only Congress has the power to declare war, yet the United States has not declared war on any of our enemies since WWII. Why have the checks and balances not corrected this?
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