The Emperor's New Cloak

INTRODUCTION
There is a reason why stories like "The Emperor's New Clothes" have been written and rewritten throughout history since the time of the Dark Ages.
Such a story is the age-old tale of opulent and pompous royalty and their mindless fawning royal court and royal household staff, all of whom never had to worry, had concerns, or even had to think, for generations.
Their concerns, their housing, their security, their maintenance, their education, their entertainment, their food, and clothing were all met by the hard labor of the emperor's commoner subjects.
The emperor and his staff lived in luxury, and all those who were supplying their grandeur lived in squalor.
Although royalty and their royal staff have always had excellent schooling, without commoners' everyday life experiences, they soon lost the need to or ability to think.
Without the need to constantly analyze and decipher, plan and perform daily to stay alive and keep loved ones fed and clothed, royalty had no need or desire for the common sense of the commoners, and they had none.
Not personally knowing any royalty, many commoners were sure royalty was a very special intellectual breed of elite people. Royalty believed the same. They were both wrong.
The commoners can live very well without royalty, but not so much the other way around. The evidence is that the settlers who first came to America from a monarchical Europe were not only better off, but soon won a war with the monarchical Great Britain.
Much like American settlers, the average European commoner had to be self-sufficient, providing his own food, shelter, clothing, and fuel through farming, hunting, and crafting. They built their homes from raw materials like logs or whatever was available, be it mud, sod, or stones. They grew crops, raised livestock, made their clothes of wool, flax, or leather, and had to rely on natural remedies and their skills to treat wounds and illnesses. And as royalty owned all the land, royalty used or took from the commoner subjects what they wanted and needed, including their products, skills, or labor.
America was the first country without a monarchy. America was a country where the people chose and hired other fellow Americans to represent them in their self-owned government.
Recently, for some reason, many of those fellow Americans hired by other fellow Americans stopped seeing themselves as fellow Americans and began to view themselves more as royalty.
Not personally knowing any royalty, many fellow Americans assumed that those of this new royalty were a very special intellectual breed of elite people; however, most are pompous, know-nothing, do-nothing, callow, and greedy recent emperors in bed with a power-hungry, bureaucratic royal staff.
Initially, in America, wealthy farmers and entrepreneurs temporarily sacrificed their wealth to serve as representatives and the President of the United States.
Gradually, somehow, some fellow Americans who had very little and sacrificed nothing were hired by fellow Americans and somehow soon became wealthy Emperors of our country. And, for some reason, this is a beautiful cloak to many Americans.