@Mildgyth
Illiteracy as protection against election interference.

Because dragons can’t read.

Reality ensues I guess?

@Background Pony Number 17  

 
Why didn’t the ponies fill dragon social media with bots to interfere in the election by making the dragons think the group consensus shifted elsewhere from where it was?

@Painfulldarksoul  
One of the few complements I can give Dominic Deegan is they did at least acknowledge this aspect with having a character who was magic immune get the shit kicked out of him and then have to deal with not being able to use white magic to recover.

@headlessrainbow  
Being immune is not controllable and has no off switch. You are either immune to something or it does exactly nothing to you and knowing or not knowing about ones immuntities has no effect.

My head-canon explanation is because dragons have a natural immunity to pony magic. I mean yes, she picks up Spike with her magic a lot, but he also wouldn’t make any attempt to resist and may simply not know how to use a lot of his natural dragon abilities right, as opposed to an angry dragon that grew up with other dragons and has magical defense at maximum.  
Granted that wouldn’t have stopped her from dropping a giant rock on him, but it still might explain why he at least intimidated her.

Rare you could have perform Acupuncture or something.

@Background Pony #D48D  
Powerful primitive pony panicky instinctual response to dragons.

It wasn’t like the ponies were welcome there.

Not shown in the fifth panel: Torch declaring Ember and Spike ineligible because they received help from ponies, and Garble being crowned Dragonlord instead.
 
Though I will say that Twilight should have just teleported herself and Rarity away from Garble.

@Background Pony Number 17  
He’s still a dragon. He had to answer the summons. Torch provided plausible deniability for him, but not for the lavender magical artillery.

@FanOfMostEverything  

 
But an Equestrian princess’s dragon servant intervening is okay?
 
One could argue this was the whole reason Celestia put Spike in Twilight’s care–for the eventual day when the dragon Lordship would be contested, and Equestria needed a friendly face in the contest.

@Painfulldarksoul  
Bingo, who she knew wouldn’t cause an all out war with dragonkind.

@Daneasaur  
Trying to train Twilight.

@Red-Supernova  
I think it’s more of a matter of trying to keep things civil. It’s clear that the dragons kept to themselves but Garble went out of his way to state that he’d attack the equestrian empire, enlisting other dragons to his leadership. Yes, dragons may not be immune to magic, but a horde of giant dragons like Ember’s father isn’t going to go down easily. And even if you “beat” them, whoever survives will swear revenge and it just keeps going on, because dragons are stubborn.
 
The lack of an actual conflict taking place prevents most other dragons from having such a conflict with ponies.
 
After all, why didn’t Celestia herself make the dragon in the cave move if he was going to cause a 100 year smog cloud?

@Background Pony #D48D  
Indeed. I don’t think dragons carry a stupid “WE’RE IMMUNE TO ALL MAGICS” immunity.

@Background Pony #9B19  
or encase him in a crystal block, or mind control him into submission, or blast him with laser beams. limitless possibilities

I always assumed it would cause an international incident. If an Equestrian princess directly intervened in a contest to decide the next Dragonlord… Yeah, that wouldn’t look good geopolitically.

Very funny Twi. Witouth the Tree of Harmony and your friends you would lose too Tirek und you have to beg Starlight to give up. XD

You managed to tie with Tirek at best, and that was when you had the power of four alicorn, and when you time travelled, you couldn’t even beat who Hasbro even directly stated was just an ordinary unicorn.

should have just teleported him away, or turned him into a breezie

The major fault of Dragon Quest was them helicoptering Spike too hard. So this was fixed.

But [context of both scenarios]