Many large concentrations of power have moved toward to softly excercising their powers, rather than hard. Users (also citizens) can take a lot of abuse IF thei

Many large concentrations of power have moved toward to softly excercising their powers, rather than hard. Users (also citizens) can take a lot of abuse IF their superiors position them to be vulnerable to them, and also give things to them at the same time. This kind of thing was a classic in interpersonal relationships, and now significant leaders found out that it works well on a large scale too. And just to underline this point, I invite you to look at comments of people reacting to situations like this. They sense that something is very wrong, but as they are vulnerable and attached, they don't like the idea of letting go at all - so they defend, apologize, rationalize, do whatever they can so that they detach the undesirable thing from the beloved entity. Just like how poor abused people do to make sense of their partner hurting them.