But yeah, the inability to ascribe any positive emotions to government or anyone in it, now or ever, is not the flex of intelligence that some people seem to think it is. Like, of course politics run on money and power. And you can reduce that to “power,” because money in this context is just a form of power. But another form of power is the ability to command respect.

I’m less in the “power always corrupts” and more in the “power always reveals” camp. Which is good news for our characters, considering where they end up in Chapter 50.

I’m noticing this pattern where people seem to become unable to tell the difference between something that’s not good and something that’s definitely and very clearly worse. And react to any mention of that worsening by “it wasn’t great before, either”, as if that negated whatever just happened.

If you’re unable to notice and acknowledge either things that improve or things that become worse, you become unable to actively support or oppose any those things.
“It’s all been rotten anyway” is exactly the argument the Polish government used to justify some “justice reforms” which effectively gave the justice minister the ability to hire fire members of the supreme court, by decree, the replacement of all important posts at public broadcasters by party members, and a couple of other such direct attacks on democracy. “Go away, nothing to see here, just business as usual, and the others ae doing it too.” They weren’t, of course, although they were of course also no saints (duh).
This is autocracy 101.

The first bit has its advantages, that second bit … not really. Some might say that you need a fighter leading you in times of war, but being able to punch your successor where it hurts doesn’t mean you know anything at all about leading a people. Much like real-world political traditions, like being a rich asshole, being related to a family of famous politicians, kissing babies or looking good on camera don’t correlate particularly well with being able to preside over a government in a way that’s actually beneficial for most humans.

In that way, I think the Troll tradition is actually a scarily good match for how even proper democracies choose their leaders, even before Trump.

Not disagreeing with anything else, but feel the need to point out that the Republican party started out on the left, and the democrats on the right (by modern characterizations of left and right). So yes, they did respect leftist views, at least to the extent they believed in their own platform. And I’m inclined to think they held their positions with far more sincerity than we see from politicians today.