The ability to petition the government was so important to the Founders that they wrote it into the First Amendment. (Madison, among others, was hostile to the Bill Of Rights because he thought those were things that were obviously not allowed to government, and that delineating them would cause people to think that the Constitution was a list of the people's rights instead of a list of the powers granted to the government.)

In the modern day, though, the government has so much power and influence over people's lives that it becomes necessary to spend a significant fraction of your attention -- or hire someone else to do it -- to government to make sure they aren't about to legislate you out of existence. See Uber as an example.

Influencing government is usually a zero-sum game that people are forced to play. It would be swell if "the other side" unilaterally disarmed so we could disarm, too, but they don't trust us any more than we trust them.