I think there is an elephant in the living room here. Even that only power contended successfully with elite privilege only when the elites were scared, scared of overthrow, scared because there was a bloc of countries proving in their eyes that it can happen. Now that that bloc collapsed, the elites feel liberated, and go for a rollback. This is one root of my pessimism: in my view, the State is really powerless to some extent, and it would need people's much stronger involvement in politics and realisation that there's a class war (yes class war, and they started it) going on to beat back.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}