Many people(in this context, Americans) are eager to speak of the heinous abuses of power perpetrated by the current government. Warrentless wiretapping, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib. Yet I have yet to meet a single American citizen who can tell me of a specific instance of their civil rights being violated. Citizens don't disappear from their homes for bad mouthing government policies, people aren't being randomly wiretapped(the process is prohibitively expensive and manpower consuming), government funded university staff aren't being replaced with professors and deans who toe the current party line.
The actions the American government have taken since September 11th have been to ensure the safety and security of the American people while infringing upon their civil rights as little as possible. The detainees at Guantanamo Bay fall under enemy combatant status not because the government wishes to hold them forever just because, rather they are there because of their own choices. The majority of the insurgent fighters are Iranian or Syrian in nationality, and to put them on trial would be to invite open hostilities with either of those two governments, something that should be avoided until the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan have been quelled.
With the sole exception of C-Span, all of the popular media outlets in the United States are either mildly slanted or completely biased in one way or another. Karl Rove is an analyst for Fox News, James Carlville is an analyst for CNN. The purpose of a major news outlet is not to deliver the news in an unbiased way, but to provoke as much sensationalism as possible to raise profits. Networks and newspapers are businesses, they are all run by faceless corporate boardrooms.
As for myself, I trust my government to do its best to deal with the problems presented to it. I understand the necessity of state secrets, just as I am grateful for the Freedom of Information Act. Deriding the government as either evil or praising it as saintly places you in a polarized ideology camp. Take the government as what it is, a collection of fallible people, and try to better it.
