alt Hacker NewsI've written a state rep and had legislation come out of it. I've written a congressperson and had federal bureaucracy expedite my case out of it. People who think their government is unresponsive generally haven't actually tried asking their government for a response.
There seems to be a propaganda thread in the culture now to get people cynical and thinking everything is rigged against you in advance, and a prerequisite to accepting this is to ignore how to the system actually works. The end result is to prevent you from getting involved. You never know if you don't try.
As an example (maybe some of the HN audience will dislike the outcome here but the point stands nonetheless), this week two sitting members of Congress were knocked out in New York, and their party told them the previous year to not bother trying.