I have a background that gives me good insight into who "the elites" are. I know them, have lived and dined with them, though I have chosen a path which keeps me outside of their inner circles.

The elites are no smarter or less smart than you or I. It comes down to motivation and worldview. Their obsession is managing the world, and that is where they put their energy. The fact that they choose to do this does not remotely mean that they have the skill to do so successfully, but their motivation and obsession with power give them the energy to fight to stay at the table, successful or not.

They aren't happy. They live their lives in fear, forever seeing the failure of their plans to provide the benefits that in their delusion they convince themselves will materialize, and never seeing that the failure is not because of their enemies but because their entire premise is flawed.

It's not about "smart" vs "stupid". They are as stupid as all of us are. The particular failing of people who would "lead", however, is a lack of compassion. Because they think they are "above", they have no ability - and though they cannot see this they actually have no true desire - to understand the people in the world they pretend to lead. Since they cannot understand them, there can never be any connection, and without connection, there will never be "leadership", only a master-slave dynamic.

The group that I do find bizarre is the many many people in the middle who allow ourselves to be treated as slaves in this dynamic. It wouldn't happen if we didn't allow it. Yet it has happened continuously throughout human history. What the evolutionary advantage to this dynamic is I have no idea, but if we take evolutionary biology as a legitimate premise, there must be one or this wouldn't be the default pattern.