True story.

A few years back, I spearheaded the removal of fluoride from my town's water supply. The county public health director met with me afterwards to try to understand what made me 'tick.' In the course of that conversation, he shared with me how he was present during the swine flu fiasco when he was up and coming in the field, and how he was disturbed to be in meetings with his peers where they expressly said that they knew the swine flu wasn't a big deal, but they wanted to find out how many people would get vaccinated "just because the government says so."

He shared this with me to try to build common ground. All it actually did was cement in my mind that I will believe NOTHING just because the government says so and will have the starting assumption that if you work in the government, you are more than likely complete scum. That's the default; they can demonstrate to me on a case by case basis that they aren't scum, of course, but they don't get any benefit of the doubt with me. NONE.