In ancient Rome there was only one thing its leaders feared more than the odd palace coup or unexpected dose of hemlock. It was the mob.

And 2,000 years later the mob remains as powerful a threat to stability and democracy as it did in those decidedly unstable and undemocratic times.

There is a cruel truth at the core of all government, one that is never spoken by those in power, because to reveal it is to put the lie to the very notion of government itself, democratic ones included.

But hell, it’s a Saturday so let’s go for it. Chances are no one’s listening.

 Every government in the world is run by what we might call elites, and has been since the dawn of civilisation.

 Any monarchy or empire is, obviously, innately elitist. Dictatorships that arise either by force of arms or gradual coercion either come from elitism — a power struggle in the top echelons — or, in the case of revolutionary governments, quickly turn to it.

 When the great liberator Fidel Castro mysteriously disappeared from view after decades in the top job he didn’t hand power to the people, he handed it to his brother. Communist regimes from the old Soviet Union to the current North Korea begin with popular uprisings and end up run by inner circles

And how many freedom-fighting anti-Western African or Middle-Eastern rulers send their heirs to Oxbridge or Ivy League universities?

When the mob rises up — from the French Revolution to October 1917 to the Arab Spring — it either fails in chaos or succeeds in creating a new elite cabal that serves its own interests, from Napoleon to Lenin to the violently unstable succession of powermongers that now stretches from Libya to Syria.

Democratic societies — whose very name derives from demos, the Greek word for the mob or “common people” — are infinitely better but no less susceptible in their way. As Winston Churchill famously observed, democracy is the worst system of government in the world except for all the others.

Even in the 20th century, which saw unprecedented scales of mass horror but still deserves some credit for stopping much of it, Western democracy was largely the domain and product of some form of elitism.

The long overdue elevation of women, migrants, Indigenous and so-called coloured people into political life in the West was on paper instant but in practice gradual. The first female prime minister of Australia and black president of the United States did not arise until the 21st century. Reverse the descriptors and both countries are still waiting.

Even so, it is clear that such a day will come. Evolution may be slow but it does not stop.

Ultimately all societies are a pyramid, a structure Shane Warne apparently believes was built by aliens, but for the rest of us is a path to be scaled. The difference between democracy and dictatorship is that in our society everybody at least has some rope.

The problem is that in an age of mob rule the tendency is not to scale the pyramid but turn it on its head. Both history and physics will tell you this is not a good idea.

One example is the very real possibility that the next president of the most powerful nation on earth will be either the populist capitalist Donald Trump or the populist socialist Bernie Sanders, either of whom could start a global recession or nuclear war on a whim or a hashtag.

If the mob rises up to deliver one or the other we are likely all doomed.

We need governments of thinkers, not tweeters. People who want to change the system for the better, not just blow the whole thing up.

The key to any society’s survival is to elevate the best among us to the positions where they can do most good. But beware the self-proclaimed messiahs of the mob.

They’re the biggest elitists of all.