That's what involvement in our government has become in America - a bunch of people shouting into an endless void, and the people in power doing more or less whatever fits their needs most at that particular moment.
While this is certainly true and billionaires have far more sway than a random citizen, I don't think it's quite as dire as you say. I've heard from multiple people who work in politics that letters like these are tracked by the staff and the tallies considered by the representative. Which all makes some sense because for every person motivated to write a letter there are likely hundreds or thousands who feel the same but didn't bother to write.
I wouldn't spend a bunch of time writing a finely crafted letter, but a short personal note sent to a Congressperson is very quick process and has some chance of mattering. I've done this a handful of times and there's usually a form on their website that makes it all quite easy.
Citizen letters aren't going to counteract major lobbyists, but a lot of issues that Congress handles don't really have entrenched financial interests on either side. It's in an elected reps self interest to keep their constituents happy and scoring some easy wins in response to citizen complaints is well within their wheelhouse.
Obviously that's no guarantee that the problem will be resolved, but at least there are efforts to try to resolve this problem. I hope this breaks the logjam.
> Our office has submitted an inquiry on your behalf to the US Embassy in Stockholm, Sweden which included a letter of support on behalf of Mr. Stenberg. As soon as we receive a response I will update you accordingly.
Obviously by itself that does not resolve the problem, but at least it will trigger some additional review.
As I noted before, I'm sure my congressman did not directly see any of this, but that isn't the point. This is just the usual way in the US federal government to deal with broken processes.
I'm hoping that this will eventually fix the problem. We will see.
Every US Congressman has staff who get letters like this everyday. They send them to the appropriate agency, and track them. It's the standard process in the US to deal with the bureaucracy when it gets stuck, it is somewhat like the ombudsman role in other systems. There is no guarantee, but there is a chance.