> So. According to all this, Americans mostly trusted government before Watergate, and mostly did not trust government after Watergate, and the reasons people liked The X Files are based on that national mindset of suspicion and distrust. And now, also according to all this, we are entering a new era in which... well, I don't know. The guy on the radio didn't go into what, exactly, he thinks the *new* national mindset is. But apparently it's one that leads to less people liking The X Files.

I don't buy it. Suspicion of government has always been a major part of the American psyche; even the people who *created* our government didn't trust it. That's why they created our government with so many limitations, and made it (or attempted to make it) subservient to a document (the Constitution and the Bill of Rights) that spelled out, in a nutshell, the limitations of that government. The Constitution established - firmly - what roles the various and sundry government bodies were to play, and the Bill of Rights named several things that the government absolutely was not allowed to do. These men who formed this country were distrustful of government, for they had seen, firsthand, what government can do. Yet they recognized it as a necessary evil, and so they attempted to temper it so it couldn't get too far out of hand. At least, that was the idea.

Americans, in theory, have never trusted government; Watergate just made it clear to a generation two centuries removed from the people who started that tradition exactly *why* we have to be watchful.

And, frankly, I stopped liking the X-Files a long time ago. You know, around when it started to suck.

> Brunnen-"no, I didn't have a point in posting this. Except the secret conspiracy one, which naturally you won't be aware of"G

Of course I won't. fnord