My perspective is more sociological.

For millennia there were only landed aristocrats and peasants. Eventually, with agriculture and civilization, an intermediate class arose; a class of artisans, merchants, moneylenders and scribes, placed precariously between the two existing poles. This class constantly obsessed about sliding back into the peasantry from which they evolved, and they feared and hated them as a result, rejecting much of what was in their own roots. They also sought to join the ranks of the aristocracy, aping their manners and fashion, and serving them enthusiastically; but they hated them too, although they dared not admit it, even to themselves because becoming aristocrats was their overwhelming ambition. Class conflict was inevitable in a world of limited resources, but the middle class always felt it was being simultaneously attacked from above and below.

The peasantry, and later the industrial workers, wanted to be middle class, the middle class wanted to be aristocrats , and the aristocrats, who patronized and despised the middle class as pretenders and nouveaux riche, simply wanted to maintain their position at all costs.
Most social friction since has been a result of this trichotomy, and each class has usually accused the other two of conspiring against it (usually with some justification).

This is where the "liberal elite" comes from, as well as the "great unwashed masses" and the "grubby social climbers" Humans are apes, and ape societies form cliques and alliances.
The lower classes still see themselves as victimized salt-of-the-earth types; the aristocracy as the result of breeding and refinement, and the middle class as the only true hard workers and ambitious, productive, moral, orderly, family-oriented, law-abiding...well, you've heard the rap.

I've pretty much resigned myself to living in this world, I don't delude myself into thinking anything but a very slow and arduous social evolution is ever going to level this playing field, but I am confidant that this process is going on now, and some day in the future it will be complete. I don't believe in quick ideological or technological fixes, but I do believe there is slow and steady progress, because that's how natural selection works. But in the meantime, the apes are still squabbling and scheming, and still trying to convince themselves that if they could only have there own way, everything would work out fine. I haven't got much choice but to let them go on believing that, but I'll be damnded if I'm going to let myself fall for it.