Also, I think these days a lot of people are just trying to survive. For most people, The American Lifestyle is pretty much work, work, and work because you need to keep your home or your apartment. You need to put food on the table for your family. You need to make sure your children have the necessities to get a good education or make sure an elderly parent is being taken care of. You need to pay your electric bill, your gas bill, your car bills and etc and etc. When you have so much on your mind, fighting for social change can seem like a daunting task. When you're living from paycheck to paycheck and see all these politicians going around in circle after circle after circle getting nothing done, what can you do but fight for yourself?
That sort of goes along with another trend. Most people won't join a cause for change out of fear that change will destabilize an already tough system. People already have it hard, and they don't want it to be harder. Even though it would only be hard short term whereas long term most would benefit from a more tolerant and active government.