[ekidd]

The public by and large has forgotten it, hell the public hardly became outraged before they forgot it.

Expecting the public to be instantly outraged by an injustice is like expecting customers to instantly understand your startup. Sure, your product is awesome, your ideas are great, and you know how to execute. But you still have a long uphill slog ahead of you before people will start giving you money. The vast majority of your market will only buy once they see lots of other people buying.

Similarly, the average person will only get upset about the NSA when they see lots of other people getting upset. A successful political movement involves winning over one influencer at a time, as the evidence slowly builds up. The Watergate scandals took a good two years to play out. Successful anti-war movements have sometimes taken half a decade.

Politics has a surprising amount of momentum. If you want to change something, you may need to spend years exerting a relatively tiny force on a huge object. And like a startup, you need to lay lots of groundwork so that you can take advantage of lucky opportunities.