Governments work for whoever acts like their bosses. The people don't act that way, and oligarchs do, so here we are.

Im not sure about "restrained" per see, but the tree of liberty needs to be watered from time to time

I trust the government, in that a government elected by a moderately intelligent population won’t be doing this fuckshit.

The biggest problem is that human beings are, by and large, far too stupid. As one guy put it, too many fully-grown adults are falling for obvious games of Peek-a-boo. There are billions of people so stupid that there are birds with greater levels of intelligence and problem solving skills.

We could have a wonderful world with a government that genuinely works for the people but instead half of us are voting our lives away just to spite already-disadvantaged minorities and the other half is voting for centrists because they’re too scared of even moderately progressive politicians. And the whole time polls show us as generally quite left-leaning, even the “conservatives” but we aren’t clever enough to see the tribalism right in front of us.

Governments are representing their people, that’s the problem, and there’s also no solution that doesn’t itself devolve into authoritarianism almost immediately. The only thing I’m genuinely holding out for is that the leaded-fuel-poisoning theory is real and we all smarten the fuck up ASAP. Reality is screaming at us to figure it the fuck out.