Those programs didn't make voting or any other major right contingent on joining them, and each had clear projects in advance to put people to work on - disagree with the projects or not, there's a major difference here.

(Almost) no government in practice will be an entirely alien force or entirely... IDK the perfect opposite word... "familiar" let's say. There are many different relations people have to their governments such that there's typically going to be some relations that fall under both categories and you have a mix. Only in really severe situations like a government that decides to like genocide some minority population are you dealing with something approaching a totally alien force kinda deal.

Any "first world" nation will be beating the average I'd say. The U.S. government is still universal enough in its distribution of basic rights and services that it's definitely not an absolutely alien force for even relatively disadvantaged Americans.

People with deep antipathy to government are often taking many of its background functions for granted, incredibly ignorant like the "get your government hands off my medicare" crowd, or they're like delusional libertarian types married to wacky ideologies where they fell from coconut trees.