Our governments rule by lies. Is this democracy?

28 April 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

My article yesterday, “Trump’s continuing lies about the war in Ukraine — and what they show”, was bipartisan, not merely against the Republican Party, but also against the Democratic Party. It is against their game — the game of constantly-lying “Good Cop, Bad Cop” politics, which both Parties play against (in order for their billionaires to jointly control) the public.

I documented there that though the Republican Trump is famously partisan against Democrats, he affirms the same crucial lies about the war in Ukraine — which the Democrat Obama had (as I documented there) started in 2014 and which was then continued by Trump and then by Biden, but Trump promised voters in 2024 he’d quickly end it but never had any realistic plan to achieve that (he LIED to say that he did) — and that Trump now is threatening Russia with retaliation if neither Ukraine nor Russia will agree with his ‘plan’ (about which I had headlined even on 4 December 2024 (well before his Presidency started), “Reuters reports Trump is set to continue Biden’s policies on Ukraine”, but whereas Reuters hid that this was what they were reporting, I did not). Finally, on February 25th, I headlined “It’s time to fire President Trump.”, and I documented there that Trump was reducing federal spending on the very same federal Departments that a recent poll clearly showed the American public the most wanted to be expanded, and was increasing federal spending on the only federal Department that the public wanted to be reduced. I was flabbergated: he is representing the billionaires against the public, even more boldly than his recent presecessors had been doing.

How does America compare with other countries in terms of its citizens’ net-approval rating of their head-of-state, and of trust in their Government? If a country is a democracy, then its head-of-state cannot, over a long period of time, say, averaged over the past few decades, have an approval-rating that is lower than his/her disapproval rating is, because then that nation’s leader is leading the country with very different priorities than the public have. All of the empirical scientific analyses about America have shown that its Government represents far fewer than 1% of its people — only the very wealthiest — and so is NOT a democracy but instead an aristocracy of wealth; but if this is true, then over a long period of time, America’s President would have a below-zero NET approval-rating. America HAS had that, over the past at least 25 years, but, right now — though only BARELY — up till at least April 7th, nearly 90 days into Trump’s second term, his second term is instead a net approval-rating of +2%.

Here are the latest scores on net approval ratings, from Morning Consult, in the 24 countries where they monthly poll on this:

——

https://pro.morningconsult.com/trackers/global-leader-approval

https://archive.ph/Y6gtF

Updates monthly

Global Leader Approval Rating Tracker

The latest approval ratings are based on data collected from April 1-7, 2025. Ratings reflect a trailing seven-day simple moving average of views among adults in each country surveyed.

Chart: 24 nations’ leaders: [Approve%-Disapprove%=NetApproval% Rating (by their public) / Approval percentage minus Disapproval percentage equals net-approval percentage]

Narendra Modi (India) 73-21=52

Karin Keller-Sutter (Switzerla… 56-26=30

Anthony Albanese (Australia) 54-35=29

Claudia Sheinbaum (Mexico) 60-32=28

Javier Milei (Argentina) 61-34=27

Mark Carney (Canada) 50-30=20

Donald Trump (United States) 48-46=2

Donald Tusk (Poland) 43-47=-4

Dick Schoof (Netherlands) 36-43=-7

Jonas Gahr Støre (Norway) 39-47=-8

Christian Stocker (Austria) 34-44=-10

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (Turkey) 33-48=-15

—————————————————— THE MEDIAN LINE ON THIS

Bart de Wever (Belgium) 34-50=-16

Giorgia Meloni (Italy) 38-56=-18

Ulf Kristersson (Sweden) 34-55=-21

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Bra… 35-58-23

Cyril Ramaphosa (South Afri… 32 -57=-25

Pedro Sánchez (Spain) 34-60=-26

Keir Starmer (United Kingdom) 28-61=-33

Shigeru Ishiba (Japan) 19-66=-47

Olaf Scholz (Germany) 21-71=-50

Emmanuel Macron (France) 19-73=-54

Petr Fiala (Czech Republic) 17-75=-58

Yoon Suk Yeol (Korea) 17-76=-59

——

Trump is 14% above the median on this; however he still is in his first hundred days (ending on April 29th) in office into his second term; and it’s normal for net-approval ratings to sink the longer a leader is in office; so, we won’t get a meaningful reading on Trump’s second term until he has been about a year into it. Every indication that I have seen (as I summarized in “It’s time to fire President Trump.”) is that he’ll be considerably into negative territory by then, and that Democrats will control both houses starting in 2027 (only for THEM to then continue, perhaps more successfully than he, the evil programs that he and his recent predecessors (both Republican and Democratic) had been pushing for).

I have done many articles about the polls on political net-approval ratings (including Morning Consult’s but also by NATO, and Edelman Trust Barometer), each of which uses more than one question to evaluate this. I find particularly of interest the Edelman Trust Barometer’s national scores on “Trust in Government,” “Trust in Media,” “Trust in NGOs (non-profits),” “Trust in Business,” “Trust in National Health Authorities,” and “Trust in the U.N.” China scores high on all of them and #1 on most of them; Russia scores low on all of them and last on most of them; America scores low on all of them. However, as I have pointed out:

Although the U.S. Government routinely advocates for regime-change both in Russia and in China, the reality is (and long has been) that even Western polling within Russia and within China has almost consistently displayed vastly higher public-approval ratings of the country’s leaders there than America’s public have of our leaders here. Regime-change in America is likelier than regime-change in either Russia or China is. (Of course, U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media suppress, instead of publicize, this key reality; however, they cannot deny this reality, because the facts cannot be denied but can merely be hidden — as is done.

Taking everything into account, Russia is an extreme outlier (exception) because its people are more distrusting of every (at least secular) institution than in any other major nation, but, nonetheless, Russians trust their head-of-state more than in any other country, with only China and India as being possible exceptions. All three of those heads-of-state are of very long standing (UNLIKE in the U.S. empire countries); and the fact that they are obviously far higher-respected by their people than any head-of-state in the U.S. empire is, indicates to me that no term-limits ought to be included in any Constitution, because the countries that have them tend to have Governments that the residents there detest — which cannot be a democracy.

There is so much garbage published about how to have a democracy, and I am hoping ultimately to replace all of it; term-limits is only a part of it. Because (with the possible exception of China) no major country today has a democracy, and this is especially true if one is to speak of a stable democracy (because China’s system seems to be also exceptionally stable). China might be a model for all countries, but the U.S. regime craves to destroy it, and clearly needs, itself, to end as it is and has been ever since 25 July 1945, a bane to this planet (and viewed overhelmingly by other countries as being “the biggest threat to world peace” of ANY nation).

I have elsewhere written about “America’s Performance on the Important International Rankings” other than on the factors I’ve discussed here. Some of them concern corruption, which is something that the U.S. Government has lots of but has employed very effective means to hide from the public. When I said “There is so much garbage published about how to have a democracy, and I am hoping ultimately to replace all of it,” I was linking actually to my proposed system TO ELIMINATE CORRUPTION from the Government, because history shows that corruption destroys democracy wherever democracy appears.

Here is a good example of how corrupt the U.S. really IS:

senchrismurphy

A post shared by @senchrismurphy

and if you don’t believe it, HERE is the source he is speaking from.

As anyone can see from that, America is, indeed, no democracy but an aristocracy, ruled by only its super-rich. All of the scientific studies have empirically proved it, but now under Trump, only fools can still doubt that this is so. My system would eliminate virtually all of that corruption (the phenomenon that MAKES America and so many other countries dictatorships) — and nothing less than this will have any chance, at all, to achieve a democracy.

—————

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.