Machiavelli, Covid, Absolutism

This is pretty much lifted from a previous piece I did on Machiavelli, though especially fitting for these times.

For Machiavelli, as a virtual matter of course, at the other end of government is someone or body of people acting to cement and increase their power over the citizens. He writes that "The people are everywhere anxious not to be dominated or oppressed by the nobles, and the nobles are out to dominate and oppress the people." This tension is for Machiavelli an unquestionable, fundamental truth. The ruling elite will always want to oppress the people, to further their control, and by simple logic the ultimate desired destination is absolutism, the totalitarian state. This leap to absolute power is dangerous for the rulers however, as the people are great in number and have no wish to be the subjects of outright tyranny. To excessively act on this urge for such total mastery is for the rulers to gamble with what they already possess. 

Principalities usually come to grief when the transition is being made from limited power to absolutism. Princes take this step either directly or through magistrates.
We must distinguish between....those who to achieve their purposes can force the issue and those who must use persuasion. In the second case they always come to grief, having achieved nothing; when however they can force the issue, then they are seldom endangered.
The populace is always fickle; it is easy to persuade them of something but difficult to confirm them in that persuasion. Therefore one must usually arrange matters so that when they no longer believe they can be made to believe by force.

So the populace must be made to believe what the rulers want them to believe, which is the necessity of an increase in centralised state power. But greater forces than persuasion must be used. Persuasion simply appeals to the limpid reason. To be made believe by force the far more powerful, primal aspects of human nature must be attacked and harnessed - fear and hatred; fear for personal safety, and hatred of those who are alleged to threaten this safety. Thus the rulers get to award themselves greater powers to supposedly protect the public’s safety, whilst as a bonus they also get to persecute the very ones who resist them as equating to the main alleged threats to this same safety, e.g. “unvaxxed.”

Princes who have achieved great things have been those who have given their word lightly, who have known how to trick men with their cunning, and who, in the end, have overcome those abiding by honest principles.
One must know how to colour one's actions and to be a great liar and deceiver. Men are so simple, and so much creatures of circumstance, that the deceiver will always find someone ready to deceive.

That seems to pretty much cover what’s been happening the last couple of years or so! The main reason for posting it was the point that for the rulers or nobles “to excessively act on this urge for such total mastery is to gamble with what they already possess.” That kickback against the push into absolutism seems to be coming into potential focus of late, and will hopefully increase.