It's interesting that the emerging principle of legitimacy of the regime is that its subjects are morally compromised by various intersectional bigotries. Not "we are leading you to a great future" but "you have no right to complain and are probably a bad person".

Is this similar or different from past essentially stagnant regimes?

Like a cruel inversion of aristocracy. A moral gradient from rulers to ruled, but negative instead of positive: the ruled are especially depraved and deserving of oppression, rather than the rulers being especially enlightened or virtuous.

This is based on conversations I've had with friends and family, and conversations observed in the wild. The ideology backing the existing power is increasingly about the depravity and entitlement of the common people who feel they have nothing.

To be fair, the common people are pretty depraved, especially these days. Though not necessarily in the particular ways currently alleged. But the rhetorical use of this idea in liberal discourse seems new.

I think we should try to imagine a legitimacy for power that works even if everyone is of high moral quality. If your power structure is explicitly a punishment, that really can't end well. It should be a collaborative shared endeavor.

How can you justify ruling and even being quite harsh on someone you respect as a morally worthwhile person? Power exists. We can't avoid it. But it seems really bad to justify it as a punishment.

If there is progress, it's much easier: "we are leading you to a great future, in which you have a part. Our virtuous rule is the cause of the success we have seen. It must continue."

But thats not faced with the problem of justifying hardship, just redirecting to success.

If there is no progress, you can justify hierarchy organically. "We all have parts to play in the social organism. This is my part, and that is yours. Our lots are not comparable because we are of different type, but the overall order is good, if arbitrary."

Positive aristocracy also works: "we are in charge because we are noble and good. You should obey us to partake in and support our goodness."

These are all variants of each other, and in common rely on the plausibility of the goodness of the system/rulers/progress.

When elites aren't actually better, progress isn't being achieved, and classes are not related in a good functional whole, are we doomed to essentially negative and vindictive accounts of power? "We oppress you because you are bad. You have no right to expect progress"

There could be a deferred goodness: "things are really hard for all of us right now. But if we stick together we will get through and be able to grow and flourish again".

But this doesn't work if the elite don't credibly participate in collective hardship.

Once legitimacy has been lost/turned vindictive, progress has stalled out, and elites are no longer participating in the collective hardship, seems maybe impossible to get back to "we are all in this together" except by conquest.

This brings us to the Elysium solution: "Quit whining. There's nothing you can do. We don't need your cooperation. You are not part of our society. We are doing just fine."

This is healthy in its own way, though perhaps not compared to its predecessor.

Sucks to go from social solidarity to elysium. That seems to be the way the West is going though. How do you get back? Re-conquest by Elysium.

There's just one problem: the regime retreated to Elysium because it wasn't healthy enough to rule a larger order.

Historically, the remaining core of an empire, after it loses or disavows the relationship with its subjects, does not come back.

The new growth regime can usually only grow from a new seed.

I don't know if anyone is thinking this, but there's a potential hail mary play of retreating into elysium, disavowing responsibility to the masses, regrouping, and then rebuilding a new solidaristic social order from a position of strength.

But China isn't going to wait.