One of the great achievements of the American right wing has been to convince Americans over the past forty years that they are living not in a representative democracy but rather in the Soviet Union or some other totalitarian state where the government rules all.
But in democracies, a governmental state toward which we certainly aspire, citizens can vote to effect policy change. To the degree that our democracy functions, American governance is not simply top down.
The right wing’s attacks on “government” are always ginned up when our government attempts to do anything that benefits the vast majority of Americans.
The right wing never attacks “government” when Washington, D.C. hands out trillions of dollars in subsidy to the American wealthy.
Perhaps over the past five weeks Americans finally understood that our government is US as well as the U.S., that government workers perform crucial services that benefit the population and, in fact, keep our democracy going.
And these crucial government workers are not paid very much for their essential contributions to US/U.S.