It is sometimes difficult to believe that the US is not headed irretrievably towards a new civil war. But recent research suggests that among the massive problems and sheer insanity of many of its citizens — let alone that of one of the Presidential candidates — the situation is much more complex.

Clearly, confidence in US national institutions is falling. In 2006, when Gallup first started measuring how much G7 nations trusted key institutions, the US topped rankings. By 2023, the US was last with Canada, Britain, Germany, France, Japan and even Italy ahead of it.

Perhaps the most bizarre finding about what US citizens think, is a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll from January this year which found that a quarter of Americans believed the conspiracy theory that FBI operatives organised and encouraged the 6 January Capitol attack.

Back in the days of J. Edgar Hoover, he conspired daily against US citizens if they were progressives or African-American. The FBI ran campaigns trying to persuade Martin Luther King to commit suicide, but even he drew the line at armed attacks on Congress – after all he preferred blackmail when it came to bringing members of Congress into line.

A quarter of the sample said it was definitely or probably true that the FBI was behind the 6 January attack with 34% of Republicans, 30% of Independents, 13% Democrats, 44% of Trump voters and 10% of Biden voters agreeing. About half of US adults in the sample........

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