Another factor enters this picture. New elite values never penetrate entirely into the culture - usually well less than half of the total population eagerly embrace them. This is countered by the inertia of the deference that the lower orders have usually given elites, either of merit or of birth. Certainly in the USA Enlightenment values never became the popular norm. But this lack of buy-in can be masked by presumption and blindness as well as the failure of problems to rise to a certain threshold for the dissenters.

That is likely the reason that revolts such as Leave can be so devastating to elite projects. And, it seems, elites are usually oblivious to the lack of buy-in from the lower levels of society. This has become increasingly a problem as the voting franchise has been ever more widely extended throughout the 20th Century. This problem has now reached critical proportions in the USA and the UK.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."