Representative Democracy
We grew up in this country thinking that we live in a representative democracy. As we all know, this is a bit of an exaggeration. It's safer to say that we live in an administrative state in which we hold elections, and our alleged representatives attempt to maneuver the administrative leviathan, a process a lot like turning around a tractor-trailer on a two-lane road. A lot of people say they can do it, but in the end, it's easier to just keep going the way you started. But be that as it may, we still enjoy a fair number of personal freedoms, especially white people, and our social manners are built on the concept of equality. We don't prostrate to the president, senators, or congressmen. The only people who can actually tell us to "get on the ground" are cops and other people carrying guns; thus, individuals retain the appearance and therefore to some extent, the substance, of equal status.
Totalitarianism
Merriam-Webster defines totalitarianism as:
1 : centralized control by an autocratic authority
2 : the political concept that the citizen should be totally subject to an absolute state authority
Applying these definitions, we see that the Mukpo Crime Family's "Kalapa Kingdom" is a totalitarian regime. The Sakyong, poised on his ten-foot throne, visibly embodies autocratic authority, and while it's almost certain that "Lady Diana" pulls most of the strings in Kalapaville, she does so without disturbing the claimed authority of the man who is likely neither her son nor Trungpa's, and derives titled respect from bearing the name of "Mukpo." By keeping the Sakyong in an elevated, worshipped status, control of the subjects remains centralized.
As was the case when Trungpa ruled the Vajradhatu corporation as the "Sole Director" with any meaningful authority, the governing groups that provide non-profit window-dressing are entirely under the Sakyong's dominion in the Kalapa Kingdom. Witness the 2018 dissolution of the "Kalapa Council," the claque of Sakyong enablers who fled from the boardroom rather than be exposed to questioning by investigators and law enforcement regarding all they know about the Sakyong's quondam alcoholic philandering. It was replaced by the "Interim Council," chief among those councillors being Pema Chodron, the expounder of the "no right - no wrong" doctrine who remembers the Trungpa years as a free-love revel where all skirts were raised in a vajra celebration of libertine carnality, and still believes that women who are raped are "probably into it." The Interim Council then was further replaced by the "Interim Board of Shambhala Directors," who all swore a fulsome loyalty oath to the Sakyong, including a self-terminating invocation by which they pray to be "liberated from their positions" if their loyalty wavers a nanometer from perfect vajra devotion. All leaving little doubt that the little boy who once played with matches and nearly burned down Samye Ling, his "father's" temple, will not be deprived of access to flammable materials until and unless the entire edifice he occupies is reduced to ash.
And all across the United States, in Canada, Mexico, and Europe, the Tibetans run their fiefdoms in the same, totalitarian fashion. RIGPA, Sogyal's global organization, remains under his control, despite his having "stepped back" from teaching responsibilities. The tales of sybaritic excess chronicled in the pages of global periodicals leave no question that his word was law -- whether he was commanding his subjects to render time, money, sex, or devotion. On command, he was provided with big screen TVs showing a steady stream of action flicks, the bodies of nuns and female students, delicious foods, and unlimited funds for his gargantuan vajra-appetites. Having heard that Guru Rinpoche once stopped the sun to make the drinking day last longer, he undoubtedly considered how he might demand that his students bend the laws of nature so that his days of indulgence might continue unceasing. You can image a nun on the phone to CERN, trying to discover how to slow the rotation of the earth -- damn the consequences!
Power has its own reasons, it's own craven needs. To maintain itself, power must be exercised, and to be maintained at a high level, it must be exercised ruthlessly. There's no proof of godhood like the absolute subjection of followers, and nothing gets the women queueing up outside the bedroom like the sight of every other male face-down before the throne of the master.