Something like half of US adults don’t know how marginal income tax rates work, which is one of the very most-relevant-to-them-personally things for them to know about the federal government. The loudest ordinary citizens complaining about foreign aid or the estate (“death”, as republicans rebranded it on strategist advice) tax can’t tell you a halfway accurate thing about either, they’re just repeating what they heard, or some assumption they made (“well if [talking head] is complaining about it this much it must be really bad!”)

This doesn’t get better for any other program or tax or whatever that you can think of. Folks have no idea how anything works and the media figures and politicians they trust lie to them constantly, and are rewarded for it.