It's not only the government, the media is very much a contributing factor too. One small terrorist attack yields multiple days of coverage and exposure. Terrorism is given an extremely outsized portion of coverage on the news and as a result people think it's a much bigger problem than it actually is. But it's an extremely convenient cover for taking away people's rights and spending even more money on the military.

I've posted this before in another thread, but after 2001, less Americans have been killed by terrorists per year than have been killed by lightning. And yet think of all the money and attention that have been devoted to something more dangerous than slipping in the bathtub, and the rights "we" willingly gave up for that. It makes 0 sense