Our elected officials are not the law but they get to write a tiny number of laws for a short while. Persistent lobbying in the long run has influence on the result. It happens slowly. Meanwhile the media auctions off our perception of the world which also has influence in the long run. Then there are the people duped by these lobbyists and this media circus as these are very good at tricking people and have deep pockets the subjects in turn selflessly keep spreading the nonsense.
I fear giving examples for that reason and because they tend to be confused for the topic but okay...
Say you have some brilliant idea like say uhhh... lets have scientific lectures on national TV. This idea of yours wont magically trend to the political steemit front page, it just wont happen. The proverbial political front page is for talking about Islam and migration only as those are the heavily funded topics. Even if you would limit your thoughts to the forced context like uhhh... say we rebuild Lybia into something nice? Then you still wont get any attention as the agenda is a a mixture of 1) divide and conquer the population into opposing camps, 2) get cheap labor, 3) destroy the EU, 4) prepare the citizens for the next war. The 4 of those have different powers behind them with some shared between.
Take for example the way the Chinese government promotes nationalism by portraying foreigners as racists. They obviously have to wonder what it would cost to buy that racism into reality. If it also destroys the EU their might be big funds available for it. Turns out this is incredibly cheap! Specially since the Russians, the US and Israel share this agenda. How to further boost the effect? Simple! Help people migrate to the EU! Wasn't Gaddafi offering this service in exchange for his death? Brilliant!
European corporations stare blindly at quarterly reports. For them this cheap labor is fantastic. The citizens are nicely divided, they have something to argue about.
The global war industry (which is huge) is salivating over all this hate. For them this is a truly glorious development. If they can cheaply participate in this crowd funding campaign many will. Its much cheaper than trying to escalate a war between Europe and Russia or trying to get the US to attack Iran. If the Chinese are sick enough to financially participate in those efforts I don't know but they would have to consider it.
The point of pushing the topic is not to look for answers, they just want the problems. Even an endless gay marriage debate is already enough to keep you distracted.
Meanwhile tax havens and shell companies are hurling the worlds wealth around and private banks have the monopoly on creating money. How they are taking all of our money will never be a trending topic. It just wont happen.
I'm afraid the way you still believe to be in control only makes it worse but lets hope I'm entirely wrong about this.
I'm not (by nature) as pessimistic (nor as worried). I appreciate there are others (like you) who feel more inclined to keep a wary eye on these things. I tend to be naive and optimistic ...