It doesn’t have to be violent, but it has to be direct. You want to “deport” US citizens? You’ll need someone to drive the bus full of people to the airport, someone from the airport to open the gate, someone else to fuel the plane, a mechanic to sign off on the plane, two pilots to fly the plane, and at least three separate air traffic controllers just to clear the plane out of US airspace. It just takes one of those people to say no.

Fucking around with the military is incredibly dangerous for both Trump and the country. This is an administration that (a) openly disregards service members (to the point of sending them into battle after publishing the war plans), and (b) directly disobeys court orders.

That’s a pretty volatile combination. Soldiers are required to refuse illegal orders. What happens when Trump gives orders that clearly violate a direct court order? Will the entire military really make the same decision to comply or refuse? What happens when individual units come to different conclusions?

It may just be about dress codes for now, but Trump’s way of governing, when applied to the military, is a recipe for actual civil war.

You see, their wives are the good ones.

This kind of thinking happens all over MAGAland. People with undocumented spouses proudly voted for Trump because “he’s going to deport the illegals”, then they’re shocked when ICE shows up at their door. Their minds were so quick to interpret “illegals” as “others I don’t like” that they literally didn’t even realize their own spouses would be targeted.

This is the power of misinformation combined with cultivated hate.

True, but so is invading someone’s home.

Which just means mass protests aren’t big enough. It’ll take a while, but eventually they’ll realize that with enough mass mobilization missing work and going into debt become irrelevant.

Unlike a lot of other countries where there’s been mass mobilization, there’s little recent memory of serious government oppression. Americans have generally had it pretty good when it comes to civil liberties over the last half century or so. They assume they can trust institutions like the courts to do the work of protecting democracy. So most people don’t realize how much worse things will get if they don’t actively resist now.