When you see a group of politicians as frantic to criminalize all challenges to their legitimacy as the Biden Democrats, you can bet they're planning to massively abuse their power. You don't equate dissent with sedition unless you're expecting a LOT of dissent.

Questioning the legitimacy of authority is actually a healthy tendency. It's a primal human impulse: "Who are YOU to tell me what to do?" America was born from serious questions about the legitimacy of rule. A good system encourages such questions, confident it has solid answers.

The problem is that American government long ago grew far beyond the boundaries of legitimacy envisioned by the Constitution. It does all sorts of things our Founders would not have considered legitimate exercises of authority by their constitutional republic.

The elegant discussion of legitimacy held by the American revolutionaries was replaced by the childishly simple, and utterly deceptive, notion that anything a "democracy" does is legitimate because the people voted for their rulers.

"They can't be tyrants if we can vote them out of office, so as long as we're voting, we can't be a tyranny" is the worst intellectual swindle ever perpetrated against free people. What dangerous folly, to think ballots are impenetrable shields against the abuse of power!

The Democrats have been openly challenging the legitimacy of Republican presidents for decades. It reached its apex under Trump, who was treated as semi-legit at best (Russia collusion!) and told he could not exercise even the clearest powers of his office.

Impeachment Theater last year was explicitly about the idea that Trump's authority to set foreign policy was less legitimate than the unelected career bureaucracy at the State Dept. Star witnesses were flabbergasted that he dared to contradict "their" policy.

So when you see the Dems frantically criminalizing every challenge to THEIR legitimacy, every question about the election, every reservation about Biden's imperial executive orders, you know they're planning to abuse their office to the same degree they sought to limit Trump's.

Notice the Dems are furiously rejecting any suggestion of the kind of power-sharing agreement they foisted on the hapless George W. Bush when they bullied him into thinking HIS election was semi-illegitimate. No reaching across the aisle or co-government this time, no siree!

Cancel culture, intersectionality, the crybully movement, critical race theory... these toxic fumes emanating from campuses during the past generation are an effort to build new rationales for the legitimacy of power. It's not about "consent of the governed" anymore.

The new model of government taking shape in America and much of the Western world - "managed democracy," or limited authoritarianism - needs a new rationale for the legitimacy of power, because its core tenet is that you DON'T get to vote against certain people or policies.

Even that silly old chestnut of "democracies can't be tyrannical" no longer applies, not even as a thin pretense. After the Great Reset, you explicitly will NOT be allowed to vote against certain "consensus" elements of government. You won't even be allowed to talk about them.

In truth, a huge amount of government power and money has been placed beyond the reach of voters since the Great Society, but there was always at least the polite fiction that you could theoretically vote to change the system. That pretense is ending.

What's coming your way over the next four years is a revised social contract, a new theory of legitimacy that no longer depends on the "consent of the governed" for key centers of power, because the governed lack the moral or intellectual stature to withdraw consent.

That's what all this is about. It was coming anyway, much of it was done incrementally and stealthily over the past few decades, but now it's time for the new social contract to be openly imposed on the American people - for their "own good" and the good of the Earth, of course.

The pandemic dramatically accelerated the rollout. From every corner of power, the message is now clear: your "consent" is no longer relevant. You're too foolish, shortsighted, racist, greedy, sexist, close-minded, and reactionary to be allowed to withdraw your consent.

You'll still be allowed to discuss, and vote against, certain things, but the little protected playground of democracy is about to get a LOT smaller. The core operating system of the State is no longer subject to your disapproval. You have no say at all in "global" affairs.

To take that final step, the architects of the new social contract need to intimate you into conceding that they have the authority to redefine authority. You must accept their absolute moral, intellectual, and political legitimacy as they redefine what "legitimacy" means.

And let's be honest: if you're no longer allowed to say "no" to certain things, what's the point of wasting the valuable time of your ruling class on some silly charade to persuade you to say "yes?" Consent of the governed is a silly fiction when the governed cannot refuse. /end