But unfortunately abuse creates deep insecurity, which creates a drive for power (control), so I think the OP isn’t far off the mark. Benevolent ruling is largely history washing imo, even if some good acts were carried out. The winner writes the history after all.

But your point is broadly fair - in most cases there is great variety in life. The ruling class, however, consists of less than 0.0001% of the global population so lies outside or the majority (figure made up for illustrstive purposes!).

They’re no worse than (possibly better than) people who voted for whichever party because their parents/newspaper taught/told them to, or because that’s who they always vote for and are too lazy, stubborn, peer pressured or insecure to change - i.e. people who claim to be politically literate but don’t actually have a clue what they’re really voting for.