Oh, they are not stupid. I can bet the ruling class in California has their own generators and does not have to drain their swimming pools due to water shortage. In fact, they are very successful at manipulating the general public at turning a blind eye at them and even not wanting all these things. Why build infrastructure for the plebs if you can pick a few activist groups, give them the power to bully the fellow plebs over zero-cost topics, and keep the society busy? This is very smart. USSR has failed at it, so did many other dictatorships. The U.S. situation appears pretty stable. People seem to genuinely believe that shaming your neighbor for having kids and demanding that schools drop math exams will solve all the problems.

Ironically, U.S. used to do use the divide-and-conquer approach overseas some decades ago. They would support multiple competing guerilla groups to keep them in a permanent state of fight, and prevent the territory from becoming strong enough to be a threat. Now the same tactic is aimed at your own middle class and nobody seems to care...