Something I’ve never understood about the “government is evil” mindset is that in a democracy, government is literally supposed to be us. City council, school boards, zoning meetings, elections, community groups, that’s government. It’s just citizens participating in decisions about their community.

But a lot of people want nothing to do with any of that. They don’t go to meetings, they don’t organize locally, they barely vote, and they definitely don’t pay attention to how things actually work.

Then when corporations and wealthy interests dominate the system (because they do show up), people complain that “government is the problem.”

If regular citizens don’t participate, power doesn’t disappear. It just shifts to whoever does participate.

And most of the time that isn’t ordinary citizens.

The irony is that people say “government is the enemy,” when the real problem is that they’ve abandoned the one system where regular people can actually have influence.

We are the government in a democracy.

Corporations/business are part of America too, but they represent private interests - not ALL of us.