The story-tellers – public officials, the media, scientists: the elites – live in an entirely different information universe from the rest of us. They behave as if we were still in the 20th century, and information is still their monopoly, which they dispense as they see fit and which we will accept on authority. They pretend that they alone have escaped Plato’s cave: they know. So their stories strike a mathematical pose, and seek to explain, from on high, how they will apply their expertise to “solve” political, social, or health “problems.”

In fact, the public is disenchanted in the elites and their institutions, much in the way science disenchanted the world of fairies and goblins.

From Prophet of the Revolt by Martin Gurri of the Mercatus Center