Dunno if I agree with either interpretation there. Many long-suffering polities are intensely conservative, while many of the least-conservative polities have arisen out of long periods of peace.

I suspect, meme aside, that it has less to do with suffering and more to do civic participation. Mexico, since multi-party democracy in the 90s, has enjoyed a very high degree of civic participation, despite its troubles, pushing it towards (relative) trust in the process of government (if not necessarily the current government itself) to resolve problems. Countries with low civic participation end up with the opposite problem - people feel helpless to influence the government, and turn to other - almost invariably less trustworthy institutions (like religious orgs, private charities, local clientistic power structures, corporations/‘the market’, etc) - to leverage against their problems. Which is less effective, but they feel more involved in it.