A Leader's Trick of Overloading the Opposite
Criminal rights - citizen's over reactions to government seeming stupidity, which is obstinacy.
When smart people in powerful positions of leadership obstinately seem stupid in their decisions, their cause is sometimes to get a screen to do the opposite when the people cry out for it. For example, we can imagine more totalitarianism arising from governmental decisions to release criminals and to refuse to arrest them and to purposely mislabel looting and theft, and things like that. The idea is that after the people have had just about enough of the criminal activity, they will cry out for a firmer hand - and then the sneaking leaders will give entirely too much of what the whole country seemed to cry out for, which will make a cover for the new normal, always referring back to when the country wanted criminals to have a firm hand and no talk of rights.
While this phase over overloading the opposite is happening, secondary causes are often woven in, and the leaders, themselves, take advantage of the temporary mode to get stuff done. Continuing the example of rampant criminality, purposed by the leadership, those leaders might sway the criminals to attack their opponents for leadership in ways that they would not be able to affect in peacetime, or even more subtle advantages might be devised by leaders who are willing to pull such a gambit as overloading the opposite.
The foil to this approach is not to be silent, because crying out is useful, but to cry more nuanced things in the first place which bellowed instruction accounts for all the obvious and some of the hidden eventualities.