Humans don't want to be free. Least most of them. They want to be ordered around, have a strong man leader.
Most humans are like cattle, they can't have their opinions reasoned with or appealed to with facts. they have to be somehow tricked or mislead.
This worked fine when the leaders had the people's interest at heart, so being tricked to have their best interests is not per say a bad thing.
But in the last 50 years we have had extremely nefarious leaders with terrible intent, the result of this is an extremely toxic society where nobody feels like they belong really.
Maybe cattle is harsh, sheep being herded is probably a better example.