Hear ye, hear ye! Let it be known that in this 10th month of the first year of His Majesty King John Hickenlooper’s reign, the sov­er­eign gov­er­nor of the King­dom of Col­orado hand­ed down an edict clos­ing the grounds of the Capi­tol palace to the pub­lic and order­ing his prae­to­ri­an guard to arrest the peace­ful Occu­py Den­ver pro­tes­tors assem­bled at the cas­tle gates.

The United States is now emulating the very autocracy we originally waged our founding revolution against.

This roy­al order, which made big head­lines last week, was all about intim­i­dat­ing imagery. Just as King John had hoped, the icon­ic pho­to­graph to emerge from the sweep was a front-page Den­ver Post pho­to of a heav­i­ly armed police offi­cer men­ac­ing­ly guard­ing the Capi­tol – a delib­er­ate visu­al mes­sage telling the despot’s sub­jects to retreat or face con­se­quences. He lat­er told a reporter that he was aim­ing to pre­emp­tive­ly crush ​“some­thing that could eas­i­ly catch on.”

Back on the East Coast, it was much the same, as His Majesty King Michael Bloomberg issued a decree stat­ing that as a benev­o­lent despot, he would ​“allow” his Man­hat­tan sub­jects to occu­py Wall Street (as if the may­or has the pow­er to grant – or with­hold – demo­c­ra­t­ic rights). But then King Mike quick­ly sent his police force in for mass arrests, stand­ing down only after a wave of out­rage from the larg­er serf­dom watch­ing on television.

This might all sound like Medieval Europe, but it’s not. It’s Amer­i­ca cir­ca 2011, as these clash­es are now tak­ing place everywhere.

Alas, it’s a pre­dictable sit­u­a­tion. Hor­ri­fy­ing eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty has prompt­ed the bot­tom 99 per­cent of income earn­ers to final­ly exer­cise their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to protest. In response, the nobles in the top 1 per­cent are demand­ing their polit­i­cal pup­pets make clear that such dis­sent will not be tol­er­at­ed – and they expect their demands to be fol­lowed. This country’s land­ed gen­try, after all, spent a lot on cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions to make sure their hand-picked auto­crats were installed in gov­er­nors’ and may­ors’ offices, and now they’re hav­ing those auto­crats engi­neer a whole new kind of bailout.

As opposed to mere­ly cut­ting a check to the bankers, this bailout is all about resource allo­ca­tion. It has the kings pre­vent­ing law enforce­ment from being deployed on finan­cial crim­i­nals who destroyed the Amer­i­can econ­o­my. Instead, those finite law enforce­ment resources are being fun­neled into arrest­ing more than 1,000 pro­tes­tors and abro­gat­ing the vas­sals’ First Amend­ment rights to ​“peace­ably assem­ble and peti­tion the Gov­ern­ment for a redress of grievances.”

In Col­orado and New York, where the occu­py-themed upris­ings have been par­tic­u­lar­ly intense, the gen­try have two dic­ta­tors well-schooled in using police pow­er for this very purpose.

Dur­ing his pre­vi­ous reign as may­or of Den­ver, King John ran a police depart­ment plagued by bru­tal­i­ty scan­dals, threw peace­ful Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion pro­tes­tors into cages and over­saw indis­crim­i­nate arrests dur­ing that sup­posed cel­e­bra­tion of democ­ra­cy. King Mike, mean­while, ordered sim­i­lar mass arrests dur­ing the Repub­li­can Con­ven­tion in 2004, unleashed an infa­mous ​“stop-and-frisk” pol­i­cy against minori­ties, and cre­at­ed an unprece­dent­ed Mus­lim spy­ing oper­a­tion with­in the NYPD.

With such extra-judi­cial author­i­tar­i­an­ism now being used against dis­si­dents all over Amer­i­ca, Den­ver and New York’s respons­es are indeed serv­ing as a ​“mod­el,” as King John him­self pre­dict­ed. And because of that, the Unit­ed States is now emu­lat­ing the very autoc­ra­cy we orig­i­nal­ly waged our found­ing rev­o­lu­tion against.

Ulti­mate­ly, that’s why this his­tor­i­cal moment is so impor­tant. What­ev­er you call the spon­ta­neous upris­ings against oli­garchy – Occu­py Wall Street, Occu­py Den­ver or sim­ply ​“We the Peo­ple” – they prove that the only sav­ior in these neo-feu­dal times is con­tin­ued protest. With­out it, the future of the econ­o­my and our free­doms are clear­ly at risk from King John, King Mike and every oth­er self-styled monarch now wag­ing war on the fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of Amer­i­can liberty.