Greatest Fear Of An Autocratic Oligarch Is Dissent

"It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority." ~ Benjamin Franklin

"Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world...would do this, it would change the earth." ~ William Faulkner

"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism." ~ Howard Zinn

"One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Silence becomes cowardice when occasion demands speaking out the whole truth and acting accordingly." ~ Mahatma Gandhi

"Dissent is the mark of freedom." ~ Jacob Bronowski

You rule through domination, every word spoken, every public gesture, every legislation passed reasserts your dominance.

But behind your back, your deepest fear is not a coup or a bullet from the barrel of an assassin's gun, it's dissent. One discontented voice can break into the silence you've so carefully maintained. You know that when people catch a glimpse of the illusion of absolute cohesion crumbling, you can't retain control. That single student uprising, that one journalist who can't be bribed, the bloggers and mass writers spreading and sharing their opinion against the oligarchic autocrat, the hum of revolution in a factory or town or New York city wards, these are not just threats, these are sparks.

And sparks in peat moss are fires that cannot be extinguished. These fires smolder under the surface, burning roots and then breaking out to the surface and doing the cycle in reverse heading downwards.

You have learned that political power is not always strength, it's perception. The moment people stop believing in your invincibility, the center starts to unravel.

Dissent gives rise to doubt, and doubt spawns audacity. Your generals will begin hedging their bet on you. Your advisors will start searching for life after you. You are frightened not of the chaos of rebellion but of the silent rot of compliance.

 And so you observe, you censor, you penalize, and you anticipate. Not out of cruelty alone, but because you know that power lasts not through strength but through keeping everyone from ever really saying anything at all out loud that everyone is already thinking.