One of my most vivid memories of the big protests against the War in Viet Nam was while these huge protests were going on in front of the White House Nixon made a point of watching football games on TV in the West Wing and made sure reporters knew that to drive home the point that he was ignoring the tens of thousands of protesters. Reagan was the same way as were the Bushes. Americans have learned that their Government won't respond to their protests, and even worse that the media routinely gives protests scant attention.
The BBC Has an interesting piece that looks at the reasons for Americans' passivity
Could world social unrest hit America's streets?
Rick Perlstein, a historian and author of Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America, said Americans suffer from a "profound sense of learned helplessness".
"The fact is the American population - even if they rose to that level of anger - they don't feel that they have anybody to address that anger to, any responsive bodies," he said. "That's a function of the breakdown in trust in government. It's a function of anomie and frustration."
But Mr Perlstein pointed to union protests in Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana this year against anti-union measures in state legislatures there, to a massive strike by workers at telecommunications firm Verizon, and constituent meetings this summer at which voters angrily confronted congressmen about feared cuts to social programmes.
"We are seeing a widespread social movement," he said. "The fact that there isn't a media narrative about interesting things happening says more about the media."
I can only think of one instance of the up-welling of popular protest inhibiting "our" representatives in government from servicing the needs of America's oligarchic elites. That was when an outraged public rose up and deluged Washington D.C. with their furious opposition to the original bill for the Bailout of the Big Wall Street Banks in late September of 2008. That only succeeded in delaying the passage by a mere four days. The elites responded to the defeat by orchestrating a PR offensive warning that economic doom was in store for the country if the government's response to the financial crisis didn't protect the elites from the consequences of their actions. This enormous grassroots populist uprising against America's oligarchic elites has receded so far down the memory hole it didn't even get mentioned in wikipedia's entry on the Financial Crisis.
Look at how far America's income distribution is from what Americans' mass media fed perception is, and how its even further from the way Americans want their country to be.
Americans aren't getting the country they want because they aren't getting the kind of government they want. There ought to be protests like the one today on Wall Street in every city coast to coast. Ameica's middle class standard of living is being dismantled all around us. Yet Americans (with the exception of Wisconsin) remain passive by and large as their standard of living is under attack as never before.
There are the stirrings of a mass movement all across the country but these are being routinely ignored in the media. In spite of that we have no choice but to be persistent and try and bring more Americans together so we can get the kind of government we want, so we can have the kind of country we deserve.