At which point I'm going to give up and point to "cultural narrative of glorification of raw-power-based or positional Authority", because I ran out of more proximal explanations.

God, Haven. Love the show, give the fandom really shitty looks. PoI fandom at least tries, though people miss the fucking point as often as not. Haven fandom... I can't be the only person creeped the fucked up by Nathan/Audrey and thinking that Nathan is... well, let's call it "has privilege and interpersonal imagination issues" and leave it at that.