I always thought the NSA gave up on its Clipper Chip initiative not because people complained, but rather because of a handful of people with the right skills or the right kind of influence engaged in civil disobedience.
Specifically, Phil Zimmermann wrote PGP and published its source code (under no-commercial-use terms, which at that time were not frowned upon as strongly as they are these days) and enough people demonstrated a resolve to keep the source code on the internet -- by continuing to host it even after being threatened by the US government -- to convince the NSA that it would never persuade enough manufacturers to adopt the Clipper Chip.
Netscape's decision to design and implement SSL and include it in the most popular browser of the day probably had a lot to do with it, too.
In general, there is plenty of hard proof that public advocacy works in the U.S. See the entire environmental and union movements, for example.
Feigning helplessness in the face of corruption is not as insightful or clever as you think, and contrary to what you might think, works to suppress citizen engagement rather than spur it. "You have no power" is what your opponents want you to think. What are you helping them convince people it's true?
The reality is that citizens absolutely have the ability to affect their governments, and should make it clear that mandating encryption backdoors is not acceptable policy.