Beppe: just alter names and specific local issues and this could be about politicians in the USA, the UK and almost anywhere else on the planet. You are SO right, but we are all comatose when it comes to changing things, anywhere, in a positive way. As I see it, there are three factors which impede constructive, intelligent, realistic and non-violent change from the bottom up:

1. DISTRACTION - we are bombarded from all sides with  gimmicks, technology, entertainment, advertising, sound-bytes, chatter and twitter, all of which serve as a drug to keep our brains either irrelevantly busy or anaesthesized, incapable of concentrating on questions that really matter and that we might, if sufficiently moved, be able to find imaginative answers to.

2. POWERLESSNESS - a feeling that anything we might do as individuals is useless because all power is in the hands of Giant Entities - corporations, governments, institutions, media, authorities of all kinds - in the face of which we become impotent. Past experience (such as the failure of mass demonstrations to stop the Iraq war) also make us feel disillusioned and cynical about the ability of people power to bring about significant positive changes.

3. TALK TALK TALK - When we do get together at well-meaning conferences, committees and assemblies to discuss what can be/should be done to Make Things Better (whatever the problem) we spend most of the time talking, presenting papers, networking, taking notes, arguing.  While all these words spoken and written may have their usefulness, the procedure merely imitates the approach of those giant Entities our Small And Beautiful outlook wants to change.

So, taking the above three impediments in consideration, it seems to me that any constructive change has to begin from within - ie from ourselves. The human mind can be a dangerous weapon (enough of those around, we don't want anymore), a passive machine permanently set on 'brainwash' cycle, or a miraculous inventor of appropriate and imaginative solutions to apparently insoluble problems. This miraculous faculty is what needs encouraging, stimulating, nurturing, rewarding, inspiring. Thanks Beppe.  

Blaugustine