I grew up in Syria where most people considered the government and police to be a bunch of armed thugs. Now that I live in the West, I've come to the conclusion that this is the case everywhere, it's just that our armed thugs behave better and with (slightly) better restrictions than others, but these restrictions keep getting ignored as time passes or whenever they become too inconvenient to the thugs.
Yes. I grew up in a communist country and, while we had plenty of state propaganda, nobody believed it. I was shocked when I discovered that the western governments behaved the same way, with the exception that their citizens believed their propaganda.
The problem with state propaganda in communist/socialist regimes is that the state is so corrupt that it brings misery to the country, people are poor and have zero opportunities. This brings natural distrust in the government. Not to mention that critics of said propaganda are usually disappeared.
In the West, the corruption is not as strong, people have opportunities and a much better quality of life (everyone can eat, education, healthcare etc) and there is much more respect for due process. All this makes people trust their government a lot more, probably too much.
In the West, critics are allowed but tend to get lost in the brouhaha, they may be refused certain jobs and won't get invited to prime time tv but they won't be persecuted unless they're whistle blowers, in which case they will be labeled as traitors and sent to maximum security, not that different to socialist dictatorships. It's just that socialist dictatorships have a much lower threshold of what constitutes a traitor...
