What
we tend to veer away from is facing that such destructive,
life-distorting policies are deliberate.  That isn't conspiracy
theory.  Basic party theory on the right is to minimize government by
"starving the beast."  You don't need to vote a program away, just
remove the funding and let it dry up and blow away, or savage itself. 
This is the ugly underbelly of Puritanism - if God materially rewards
the good, then the poor are not unfortunate but are the deserving poor
- that is, deserving to be poor.

And pretending to be of good
will is never, ever going to change that.  It's the point of view that
says: "You made your bed, now lie in it."  It's determinism - if you
are good, you will prosper, and if you are not, you will fail.  You got
a choice, you made what you have, live with it.

England was an
incredibly ugly place when this country was settled.  Ugly on a social
level.  The "fencing of the land" removed common grounds for farming
from access, behind fences to be used for feeding sheep for wool for
the British woolens industry.  To make money in wool, people were put
out of their homes of many generations (the owners released from their
obligations under feudal law).  They had to hire out as farm hands or
factory workers, and hide from the law when unemployed and thus
unhoused.  They could be imprisoned for vagrancy or theft of food, and
that is where the indentured servants came from who came to America and
Australia.  America also got younger sons and daughters of the nobility
and gentry, while Australia was a prison colony.

Not what you get in your average history book.  (See H. Zinn, "People's History of the United States")

We
are also in a period when nations are not necessarily the seat of
power.  Because of our indoctrination (public ed. in the U.S. was
approved to train workers for industrialization, and that is what it is
designed for-which is why it is now outdated) we tend to go into
panic/paranoia when trying to break through it.  Conspiracy theory
isn't where you want to go, but past fear and stereotype.  People with
money/power like to keep it.  Insulating oneself is a part of that. 
That isn't the same as a card-carrying membership secret society. 

It
is, in fact, a good bit more devastating to realize there really are
people with very few limits on their personal power (except that they
are also entrapped by thier riches).  And it isn't people, exactly,
there is an entire shell game of interlocking boards and management and
majority stockholders that most of us can only try to imagine, because
it is so removed from our experience.

The key to all of that is
the history of corporations.  (The Founding Fathers hated them.)  It is
actually corporations who hold international power, and how they got to
be considered "persons" in U.S. law is another dark moment in U.S.
history.  Also, has anyone noticed who now has super-civil rights in
our society? Corporations....

Sociology has found through
research that people see far more detail and differentiation in those
near to them in experience:  if I am working just at just above minimum
wage, I will see numerous gradients of experience below me
economically, where someone who lives from rents and interest sees
people who work, with workers being anyone below top mgmt.

Um....we Americans lie a lot.  To ourselves and each other.  When we
lie to other countries, they think we are silly.  Because no one there
would believe such lies from their government.  What they find silly is
our belief in our own lies.

The
challenge is to take back control of our society one step at a time. 
And the key is that we do not leave anyone out - or we get something
really, really ugly, like we have now, every time we try to wake up
from our collective dream.

I don't know about you, but I have had enough of the American nightmare.  Anyone for coffee?

There is a whole politics around food.  We ran our own small farmers
off the land - in late '70s most family farmers had at least 1 or 2
outside jobs in a 2-parent family, just to keep the land.  Corporate
farms took over animal husbandry (raisin' for food) and crop
production.  Then, when a few got into certified organic farming and
range/free, organic-fed poultry/eggs/milk, the big factory farmers got
Congress to regulate organic food.  We see the result of that - a lot
of what's labeled organic - isn't.  It's been turned into just another
lie to sell factory products at a higher profit.  People in other
countries are starving because of a political move to make ethanol from
food source plants - after the U.S. applied pressure for a generation
for developing countries to let go of subsistence farming, which gave
their people the ability to survive.

We have deliberately sold
policies which will force other countries to enslave their national
agendas and enclose their people (except for a few at the financial
top).  It's economic slavery that poor people could avoid when they
could grow their own food.  Then, in the '90's, it started being
applied to us here at home.  (Clinton was liberal only in relation to
Bush, and even he was restrained by a contrary congress.)

Factory
farmers got the right to control organic foods.  They got the right to
factory-farm animals, to butcher them by next-to-slave labor (folks
from Latin America who couldn't grow their own food at home-their land
was taken, as part of this "free market" movement), they got the right
to NOT label genetically-modified products.  (And they are contesting
the right of others to label their own products as "non-GMO"!)

As
far as sending food aid, that's very political as well.  Agencies are
required to buy food in the U.S. and ship it, not support agriculture
in that country by buying it there.  With rising food costs, U. S. food
aid has dropped 50% in value in 2 years!

And all of that is as nothing next to the key and crowning piece in the puzzle.

---Non-reproducible seed.---

The
farmer can't save seed from one year to the next for a new crop, and
seed is one of the highest costs of farming at a subsistence level.

The
farmer also can't hybridize, or save seeds from plants that are better
adapted to his farm, because ... (see above-they are non-reproducible).

Monsanto et al are lobbying very hard to monopolize all markets worldwide, and:

The
REAL organic farmers, and those few who nurture heritage varieties
(which we are killing off so very quickly) are having their farms
endangered by seeds blown into their fields (which are
non-reproducible).

...anybody for Soylent Green?