The Divine Mr. M

I certainly hope I'd be dead by then. ;P But seriously, after reading Dr. Lamb's approach, I'm convinced that you're right: mass democracy has failed and the result of the failure is that the system is reverting to its older default of elites who live in their own bubbles superimposed on masses who have nothing in common with them culturally. This would seem to indicate that the ultimate result of progress is the revival of an older pattern, which if anything confirms fractals as a picture of human life as so much else.