So the Law’s a Prop. Now What?

Every time Trump steamrolls another norm, somebody in your feed chirps, “That’s illegal! He can’t do that!”  

Cute. But legality stopped mattering the moment the referees joined his team.

We keep quoting statutes like they’re Harry Potter spells. Posse Comitatus! Habeas Corpus! Checks and Balances! None of it works once those in charge decide rules are optional and consequences are for suckers.

The Myth of the Guardrails

Laws don’t enforce themselves. They’re only as strong as the officials willing to uphold them. When the executive branch ignores laws and court orders, when Congress dodges confrontation, and when the Supreme Court acts like a notary public, “the rule of law” stops being a system and becomes a slogan.

Federal judges in California, Illinois, and Oregon have already ruled that Trump violated the Posse Comitatus Act by using troops in domestic law enforcement.  

On Paper: Courts said no. Each ruling confirmed he lacked authority under the Insurrection Act and Posse Comitatus.  

In Practice: He kept issuing deployment orders, defending them in court, and broadcasting the images of soldiers and federal agents in American streets. Even when judges intervened, the optics had already done their work; asserting power first, facing accountability later.  

That’s the pattern: act, amplify, then argue.  

Trump doesn’t care about the law. He cares about getting away with breaking it.  

By pushing boundaries in full view, he turns defiance into spectacle. Each headline normalizes the next offense.

What Brave Citizenship Looks Like Now

We’ve emailed our representatives, phone-banked voters, signed online petitions, and hashtagged social media posts into exhaustion, and the authoritarians are still advancing.  

It’s time to stop performing democracy and start practicing power.

Use their data obsession against them. Build or support public databases that track political donors, corporate enablers, and dark-money funnels. Make them searchable and local. (ProPublica’s “Dark Money” project proved how transparency rattles politicians.)

Reclaim the channels of communication. Authoritarian regimes control the media; oligarchs throttle the algorithms. Stop depending on them.  

1. Decentralize. Diversify. Distribute. Host an independent forum or create local mesh networks that link devices directly. Use peer-to-peer file sharing, set up ham or shortwave radio relays, or even revive an old-school electronic Bulletin Board System (BBS). When one channel fails, another fills the gap. That’s how resilience works.
2. Own your list. Write a newsletter. Email subscribers directly. You can’t be shadow-banned from your own address book.  
3. Mirror everything. Back up local news, videos, and documents in multiple formats so truth can’t be erased.
4. Go low-tech when needed. Enlist people who understand “Sneaker Net” or the digital equivalent of the Underground Railroad, as in humans physically moving information when networks go dark.  

Turn bureaucracy into a choke point. Flood public-comment portals, ethics boards, and regulatory filings with legitimate, documented complaints. Bureaucrats hate paperwork, so use that to slow bad policy.

Build parallel civic infrastructure. When government channels collapse, citizens can still build their own: community bail funds, neighborhood legal defense, independent vote-tab monitoring. Create shadow institutions that keep freedom running when official systems fail.

Adopt creative non-cooperation. Peaceful disruption isn’t quaint; it’s strategy. Refuse to normalize illegal orders. Demand paper trails. Keep records of every directive that violates policy, and release them when necessary. 

Protect the storytellers. Writers, videographers, teachers, librarians—the people documenting truth—are the first targets. Treat them as essential infrastructure. Fund them, house them, defend them.  

Reclaim civic hope. Authoritarians win by convincing people that resistance is futile. Prove them wrong with visible micro-victories: expose one lie, unseat one corrupt official, keep one neighbor safe. Every success chips at the myth of inevitability.

The law may be toothless, but we’re not. The old playbook’s done. Time to grow new teeth.