INDEED. Hopes and prayers are wasted unless you have a rescue plan, then the hopes and prayers are for that plan to succeed. You are right that the people are alienated from government, as well as each other and the natural world. It is among the psychological effects of usury-money on people.

Usury is the abuse of monetary authority for personal gain. Our monetary system is institutionalized usury but the Great Philosophers and Saints saw its deeper psychological impact which is why it was often banned. It was seen as the sin of sins, the progenitor of the 7 deadly sins. It was behavior that indigenous people in the Americas might call Wetiko or Windego, a psycho-spiritual disease of self-devouring greed. Dante described it as "an extraordinarily efficient form of violence why which one does the most damage with the least amount of effort."

In any case, the monetary system has empowered a few to rule the many. It is a human made system, a social power embodied in law and it is the constitutive governing factor. Humans can change the law, hard to do with criminals in charge, but humans need to reclaim their sovereign power from this unelected government of those who control the money, and elect a government dedicated to the public interest who will use money to invest in the people, not profits for the few. monetaryalliance.org