November 4, 2025

If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.

Frank Herbert (1920–1986), American science fiction writer, The Dosadi Experiment (1978), Jay p.177

Oh, you don’t think you’re helpless and ineffectual, and in need of someone to take charge? Prove it!

Despotism in a masked form is frequently found in supposedly democratic settings, when the executive (whether a president, a prime minister, or other high official) ignores other players who don’t understand their own collective power or know how to exercise it.