That’s sort of the ironic bit. IMHO it’s been this way for awhile, but because it was pretty much as you described (“the elite”) with the reigns we pushed the argument that voters were individual agents.

The genius in strategies enemies are using are leveraging the exact same levers already being leveraged against be populous: free speech as a roadway for propaganda, misinformation/disinformation, and widespread social manipulation.

There was a time when it was more difficult to scale these sorts of strategies so there may have been an illusion of agency. Also, a hundred years ago issues were a bit less complicated/nuanced so your voters could probably wrangle ideas intelligently more independently.

I also suspect the corporate undermining of the general population for their own wealth grab has weakened the country as a whole, including the voter base. We want to undermine education at every turn and stability of your average citizen so they can be more easily manipulated. That comes at a cost because once we’re in that position, whose to say youll (the US elite) will be the ones with the reigns? By weakening the population for your own gain, you open up foreign adversaries to do the same and they’re doing just that.

We should focus on improving general education and the populations overall stability/livelihood. That has to do with pushing back on some of the power grab the ultra wealthy have taken, at the populations expense. These are of course just my unsubstantiated opinions.