A lack of options isn’t really the same as a dictatorship. The day to day choices are sometimes hard to abstract into an intelligent vote every 2 or 4 years. The US suffers from a lack of trust in public institutions, so they aren’t given enough funding or the right leadership to take a step back, take a good look and make tough choices that goes against reactionary NIMBYs.
The sprawl may very well be part of the culture. I just don’t like to call everything a culture, including commuting. Commuting just seems a necessity and the choice of how and how far you commute is a function of infrastructure and land value. Sounds almost too boring to organize around, but it would be important to find a solution that works for everyone, instead of just single individuals.