Unfortunately I think you are laboring under a false premise, namely, that folks in the U.S. are "regular people." With our (relatively) clean air and water, room to spread out, big houses, big vehicles, etc., we are all elites compared to the majority of people in the rest of the world. Compare against most of the world who get by on far less than we do: they don't have huge vehicles and homes; they don't eat much beef; etc.

So it's not about elites vs. "regular people" here, it's about middle-class elites vs. other middle-class elites fighting over whether Johnny gets to buy and use the toys his middle-class income gives him the privilege to play with, and what kind of sacrifices we will make for the greater good. It's not regulation that is causing a cultural backlash: it's intentional and insidious cultural warmongering by a largely silent but even-more-insidious class of elites (the uber-wealthy) who fund think tanks, hire armies of lobbyists to press Congress, and discover and fund media personalities such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity to pit Americans against one another and keep them distracted away from the even bigger issues we face. Democratic and existential crises are just collateral damage to the interests of these people.

This war of the narratives traces its roots to the 1960s, where the country was beginning to come to grips with racism (Civil Rights Act) and the Vietnam War. White middle-class and Greatest-Generation fear of hippies, Blacks, homosexuals, atheists, and others was easy for politicians and monied interests to leverage. Soon, think tanks and lobbyists started pressing Congress (along with the backing of Reagan, who was propelled to victory by the Moral Majority who brought politics into church) to deregulate the airwaves, leading to even more divisiveness in the media. Communication consultants like Frank Luntz (author of the so-called "death tax") were hired to sharpen the divide.

And Americans are sadly and unwittingly falling for this manipulation, hook, line, and sinker. Now it's the freaking Baby Boomers (who were part of the '60s counterculture and became the very thing they fought against) who are ensnared in it, and I fear my fellow Gen-Xers are being also being led into this trap.

I, for one, refuse to accept that any way other than massive world coordination is a pointless exercise. Major change is often the aggregate of small changes anyway. And being willing to make sacrifices in the name of health before others do (especially others who can less afford to make such changes) is what admirable and moral leaders do.