This is a good point. Government is always in a battle between good and evil: protecting citizens from evil corps (food safety), and actually being evil (i.e. backdoors on encryption).
Is it? It seems to me gov't is about enriching those that have found themselves in positions of gov't office and their cronnies. Long ago has gov't no longer been concerned with the well being of its citizens.
If you instead base your opinion off the attention whores you see/hear in media, then yeah you’re going to be distrustful. That’s because those people optimize for being in the news. They are a small fraction of the political world.
There's also the non-political gov't employees that do the actual work. There's plenty of stereotypes about them too, but for the most part, I'd agree they're just people with a job living their life.
I totally agree for the politicians who we frequently see in the media, like Ted Cruz. But that’s such a small, non-random selection that I hesitate to generalize.
What makes you feel comfortable in making such a generalization?