Public trust in government has been declining since the 1960s[1]. There's a book called Congress and the Decline of Public Trust, published in 1999, which talk

Public trust in government has been declining since the 1960s[1]. There's a book called Congress and the Decline of Public Trust, published in 1999, which talks about this trend[2]. You can borrow it hourly on archive.org. There's a paper from 1983 called The Decline of Confidence in American Institutions which discusses this as well[3]. People already knew about it during the mid 80s. [1]: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2015/11/23/1-trust-in-government-1958-2015/ https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2015/11/23/1-trust-in-g... [2]: https://archive.org/details/congressdeclineo0000unse/page/n5/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/congressdeclineo0000unse/page/n5... [3]: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2150494?seq=1 https://www.jstor.org/stable/2150494?seq=1