I'm convinced that the reason people don't wake up to the reality of elite-inflated bubbles is that the media is part of the story-telling machine that numbs the public.

See this thought-provoking piece about this basic reality.  Ben Hunt argues that we as a species are genetically programmed to respond to simplifying models (that he calls 'memes' and 'narratives') much more positively than we realize consciously.  And the powerful people who run this world understand this better than we do.