I just watched the Waco on Netflix. It was surprisingly even handed and didn't paint the ATF or FBI in a very good light.
I think the problem, and we still see this today, is that the government just decides to curb stomp certain people for breaking the law. Then when things go south, they blame all of their poor decisions on the criminal suspect. "I wouldn't have had to kill all these people if you hadn't broke the law and brought me out here in the first place."
The original ATF raid was meant to be a display of force when they could have just as easily scooped Koresh up the next time he came into town to buy groceries- they had an informant literally in his house who snuck off right before the raid started.
Then, it seemed like the FBI's hostage rescue team was constantly undermining the negotiation team. They interviewed the lead negotiator, and he was basically pushed off the case because he kept butting heads with the tactical guys, and after he left not a single person walked out of the compound before they burnt it down.
A lot of us are too young to have been politically aware before Bathhouse Barry's debut to be fair. It wasn't so easy to get access to information before the internet became part of life. Waco is historical to a lot of us. I imagine it was quite the experience living through the beginning. This shit is all a lot of us have ever known.
This is an oft forgotten point. Pre-internet, it was hard to have a real good idea of any event unless you were above a certain age and physically around to witness.
Which, wasn't a problem for things that were neutral or written about extensively by numerous opposing parties. But if it was contentious, or a narrative was built around it, then the information was basically being passed around orally by guy's you were not likely to trust.
Art Bell (F) was probably one of the most significant mainstream sources of a counter-narrative to Waco. Yeah he was kinda a boomer lolbert, but the Feds fucking up Waco was a bit of a hobby horse for him. And he had a massive audience.
Of course you had to be listening to him at 2am to hear it, in between the guys talking about alien and Elvis sightings. So perhaps I see your point there...
Art (and him having Alex Jones on at the time) is exactly where I got my anti-big government awakening. It just took me a while to realize that both sides want big government.
TBH in the 90s, the only people really talking about Waco and Ruby Ridge were people like Art Bell, Alex Jones, Texe Marrs, Jim Tucker, and Militia groups.