You shouldn't feel bad about disliking the film intensely! I would only be confused if you didn't feel intensely one way or another. Fassbinder is not very skilled at half-measures.
I rewatched the film about a week ago to have it fresh in my mind. Watching it again, it's clear from what you've said why it wouldn't rub you the right way. The characters barely give a damn about what they are doing, and the film is satirizing them for this (note how they don't even know what they are inciting terror for, they only ask for prisoners to be released because that is what other groups typically do). As for the maddening background noise, the oddest thing about it is the way it is seen as so normal by the characters, which I took to be the joke. Clueless people surrounded by a constant stream of information, from which they derive only something to mimic, not something understood. On top of these people who lead pointless but destructive lives, people who seem to have some sense of the political implications of their actions, you have a capitalist figure who sees no issue in provoking destruction in the guise of a political action for the support of his business which thrives on the suppression of his own people. Essentially, you have a display of how capitalism perverts patriotism into a means to police one's people for a profit. In America, the greatest country on earth, this sort of thing rarely inspires art but it did inspire one Act called the Patriot Act, which was unfortunately not a play.
Once we fought for our freedom from tyranny, then we fought for our free markets, now we fight because it is profitable.
I think it's hilarious and brutally scathing, myself, but I certainly don't expect anyone to react with indifference! As far as Fassbinder goes, you're sure to have an intense reaction to In a Year with 13 Moons, perhaps better because it is less satirical and more empathetic, perhaps worse because it is brutally honest. Most of his work is heavily influenced by Brecht, which means that there is a lot of stuff that will intentionally 'push you away' rather than 'pull you in' for the sole purpose of preventing you from giving much of a damn about the characters, so if that's important to you right now then he may not be your cup of tea. I'm often more interested in the underlying implications and humor interspersed through his work, dark as it may be, so he's like my brier patch.
I think it's a fun film to talk about with regards to patriotism, though, at any rate. It's certainly not a pretty picture.