See I think the government does trust us in a way. They trust us to be distracted enough by media propaganda and distracted by the difficulty of earning enough money to maintain our lives,lives where most of us are overworked so we are looking for ways to turn our brains off as much as possible, whether it be through Netflix, drugs, sports, all forms of entertainment. This distraction causes us to be ignorant and uneducated as to what could move us forward to actually making the country better place for everyone, not just a chosen few. The government protects the interest of the ruling class and the people, who outnumber them and could tear the understood/typical way of doing things apart if they United, remain divided over social issues such as racism and sexism, while they continue to hoard money for themselves and the working class descends even further into despair.
Basically they trust us to fall victim to the system of inequality that is capitalism aka corporstism aka the government and large corporations working together to maximize personal profit, regardless of whether it hurts the majority of Americans.