Indirect democracy makes it very easy to eschew responsibility in terms of "I had a choice between candidate X and candidate Y; they both supported decision D. I didn't support it, but since I had to vote between either X and Y, I didn't have a choice, did I?".
If the actions of the NSA were seen by American citizens as such a major concern that they would not vote for a candidate who supported it, then we'd see major votes against one of them. If all the candidates were to represent interests opposite to those of their voters, then we'd see no votes for any.
The fact that we keep seeing these votes is simply a proof of the fact that most people don't really care about it. The handful of us who hang out on HackerNews aren't representative of the general populace. Ask the audience of Toddlers and Tiaras, who are probably an order of magnitude more than we are, what they think about it, and 90% of them would probably tell you something similar to "NSA? Is that like, UUUUUUUM, some football league or something?"
> People have been boycotting elections for years. That only makes it easier for the radical fringes to their their crap on the agenda and for politicians to focus on those low-hanging fruits.
People have been boycotting elections for years -- they're only valuable when they bring the turnout below the threshold of validity, which has happened in some countries.
If US citizens feel their political or electoral system is biased, whining about it won't help -- and it looks particularly hypocritical after readily applauding the Arab spring.