But the political-capital-retention cult stuff is a key part of the doctrine they teach their followers, that doing things wastes your precious vital essences which must be conserved for the important things like the technocratic management of imperial hegemony.
spoiler
Which is obviously completely backwards: political power comes from enacting policies that serve the material base of your own power. Liberals enact policies that favor the ruling class because they derive their mandate from the blessing of the ruling class, and they block policies that favor the people because the ruling class doesn't like those policies. But to actually sell that deception to the public they invent the idea that doing good things is bad, actually and that they just can't spend any magical political power credits on doing good things cause they need them all to be the Adults in the Room and do bad things that are Tough Decisions That Have To Be Made.
But the political-capital-retention cult stuff is a key part of the doctrine they teach their followers, that doing things wastes your precious vital essences which must be conserved for the important things like the technocratic management of imperial hegemony.
spoiler
Which is obviously completely backwards: political power comes from enacting policies that serve the material base of your own power. Liberals enact policies that favor the ruling class because they derive their mandate from the blessing of the ruling class, and they block policies that favor the people because the ruling class doesn't like those policies. But to actually sell that deception to the public they invent the idea that doing good things is bad, actually and that they just can't spend any magical political power credits on doing good things cause they need them all to be the Adults in the Room and do bad things that are Tough Decisions That Have To Be Made.