I've held this belief for a long time.

The people at the top, as far as I'm concerned, they're not even at fault - they're doing the only sensible thing that can be done, which is manipulate an incredibly inept and useless population in exchange for benefit to themselves. This inept and useless population rewards its rulers, and does the bidding of its rulers, in exchange for those rulers shitting all over that population - and, indeed, this is likely the only possible way the rulers could possibly gain anything from that population, simply due to how useless that population is. So it wouldn't make sense for the rulers to behave any differently - there is no other avenue for them to gain anything except the avenue they currently pursue.

The people on the bottom, on the other hand - what is their excuse? What reason could there possibly be for continuing to reward their rulers for that behavior? What reason could there possibly be to remain incompetent and ignorant, further enabling the rulers to continue in their behavior at every turn? Should I have sympathy for the little man because taking responsibility for his own behavior is difficult? If he paid even the slightest bit of attention, he would understand the consequences of his actions and his compliance would be even more horrifying to him than his resistance. The common man is lazy. He refuses to do his part to make coexistence practical, and he has instead demanded that he be exploited and used simply to cover the cost of his own existence.

If ants overran my house, and I got mad at the ants and blamed the ants, I would be a simpleton and an idiot. Instead I would blame the person who dumped bag after bag of sugar all over the house. He alone is the person who caused the house to be overrun by ants. He deserves to have the ants running through his house.