I have a problem with your post. I don't give a shit what you believe and with how much "flame" you believe it. I give a shit about what you've done. Congress has a 12% approval rating, but in 2012 it had a 90% re-election rate. Did you vote? Yes? Well that's just the tip of the iceberg. I've seen campaigns in action and I've participated in a few. Changing people's opinions is WORK. When I worked on one campaign I sat down with a phone book and called numbers at random for 10 hours straight asking if they had gotten out to vote while pushing my candidate.

Write in to your local newspaper with a rhetorically sound op-ed. You might change a few people's minds.

Start an organization of like minded individuals and lobby your senator/congressman. Call him or her 300 times until you can buy him dinner and shove your ideas down his throat along with steak for an hour.

You have to put the active in activist in order to succeed in this country. During the Civil Rights movement people weren't signing petitions to integrate schools, they were holding sit-ins and delivering fiery speeches in front of active listeners. You should work toward similar strategies.

Edit: Upon rereading your post, I wanted to say that this is true for things beyond politics, i.e. other ways of changing the status quo.