I am well into my Sixties, and I have always had an eye on things since the Humphrey-Nixon election, but...perhaps you meant to use the word “naive” instead of “civil” (which is not a big problem for me-I can have the propensity to be “naive” on occasion)
What I grapple with is the propensity that I have to not want to believe certain things about government or authority because of the betrayal of trust inherent in accepting them, and the accompanying disillusionment. I accept that it is a known character flaw I possess that many people have good-naturedly pointed out to me over the years, that I make the mistake of giving loyalty to people who may not be worthy of it, giving people slack when they don’t deserve it, and projecting my value sets onto others who do not practice them.
The end result is, I am often the last person to change my opinion on certain matters, simply because these factors above collaborate to instill a type of inertia in my judgement that makes me slow to change my opinion with matters relating to authority and government.
On the other hand, once I do make that change, it is nearly impossible for me to go back to a previous mind set, so I guess there are some who would call me a “lagging indicator”, and a sticky one at that.
I readily admit it, though, the last four years have been such a tsunami of obvious and irrefutable behavior on both the part of the press and the governmental institutions that I really believe that inertia is no longer an impediment for me with respect to governmental and corruption related affairs.
It is disillusioning and discouraging, but on the plus side for me, being disillusioned and discouraged in and of itself has never been the issue-it is the disinclination to believe that certain people or entities would engage in things the disillusion or discourage me.
In other words, I was never reluctant to change my views on something out of fear I would be disillusioned or discouraged, but simply because I projected my values on those people and entities and felt THEY wouldn’t do it. It is a flaw, but...at my age, pretty baked into me. At this point, my best defense is clearly seeing my flaws and minimizing them, and seeing my good points, and maximizing them.