I got fired from my last job because I didn’t tell the seniors they were special boys. I very politely told an engineer he had to update his building code and when I eventually had to tell him that I couldn’t work on his project if he wasn’t going to follow the current legal standards it was me who got spoken to about “insubordination”.

The only reason you “can’t” say no is because everyone together believes they can’t and actively, or even simply passively, discourages others from doing it. The only true power that these people have is what is given to them, they aren’t wizards.