Whatever lack is extant in any one or any group rises up its hydra head. Killing it makes it worse. Facing it directly offers the opportunity to make new choices. Lack is a victim condition. Trying to get powerful in gain makes it worse. What works relatively easily is making choices. Choosing your way beyond the old boxes is much more playful and plentiful. Those in chronic lack have atrophied choice. Same for the politics of so-called democracy in cultures who have no structure for a western imposed system. The people must choose but even dear old America has a long, nasty history of undermining the people's choice in the name of the Cold War or national security, let alone greed, ignorance and arrogance. This is the karma of empires. In their later years they pay the price though they may look innocence. When the disadvantaged are made to sacrifice their innocence to all manner of sophisticated and gross violence of the empire builder, the colonized will seek their violent retribution on the seemingly innocent colonizers long after the grossest injustices. Tyrants have selective memories. Victims never forget. Neither stance will ever never ever clear any of the karma. That is what we see today and will see for some years to come as the thick, old, viscous/viscious karma unwinds. It's hell when the underbelly of the underworld goes tits for tats up. All the heavenly notions of hope and love and light will not unwind the mess. Those strategies are so often states of denial. What will dissolve the patterns is direct, messy, real on-going exchange at every level. It'll look out of control, for awhile. It'll look bad, perhaps even evil, for awhile. And when the putrid pus of the past passes, the breath of new choices will open possibilities dynamically without the fear laden goop of hope and light wrapped around it's ankles.