It's Common Sense

CA Gov. Newsome. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

“To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.”

• Thomas Paine

The evidence is beyond a reasonable doubt that the President of the United States led a violent overthrow of the government and has spent his life as ringleader of a child trafficking ring. The existing criminal justice and electoral system brought this person to the oval office twice.

He made it clear he will cheat and do anything to remain in power, and that's right where he and his party are. Every major pollster shows that forty percent of the country supports this, largely as a result of oligarch media conditioning.

And some people want to tell us that MAYBE we can win enough seats that in a year we could POSSIBLY kick him out of his job. Last time they had four years to do something and he wasn't even President. Now the GOP control all three branches of the federal government. They will never willingly let go and they are unrestrained by the existing system. And people are going to sit there with a straight face and tell us that's all we can do is trust elections and wait it out.

We know Trump and the GOP and the corrupt Oligarchs belong in jail. It's obvious. Today, we sit inside a system of governance that has been weaponized to by the most evil and corrupt among us.

So what can be done? This country was founded as an answer to that very question.

Contact every politician in every way you can and demand they fight back or resign. Educate yourself and your community on the realities of our circumstances and the responses at our disposal. They have been trained to believe politicians when they throw up their hands and act like they have no power. We all have power. We all have choices. Justice isn't protected through acquisence under authoritarian threats. There is truly no series of events where civil lawuits and multi-year election cycles fix the system that brought Trump back, worse than the first time, and rolled out the red carpet for the dismantling of US democracy.

This system is broken so deeply that it cannot be repaired through traditional means. In 1776, Thomas Paine made the same observation about a different government that existed only to serve and enrich an unaccountable class of society, and he put the solution in a pamphlet called Common Sense. The tools have changed. The principle has not. When a government fails this completely, we have a duty to build something better with what we have.

Soft secession and oppositional federalism offer an alternative using existing infrastructure to radically alter the situation. Here are several examples of what that looks like in practice.

A Bribe is a Bribe Act. State-level legislation that treats political bribery the way criminal law treats every other kind of bribery. A cop who takes an envelope full of cash goes to prison. A Supreme Court justice who takes a quarter-million-dollar vacation from a litigant gets a thank you note. We end that. State prosecutors file charges, state courts hold trials, and no presidential pardon can touch the conviction.

Constitutional Trigger Laws. When a severe enough constitutional crisis hits, every employer in the state automatically diverts federal tax withholdings into a state escrow account. The money doesn't disappear. It sits there, waiting for the crisis to resolve. But the federal government stops getting paid until it starts following the constitution as We The People see it, not as the corrupt Robert's Court twists it.

The Means Testing Corporate Welfare Act. Any corporation that contributes to political campaigns loses access to government contracts, tax breaks, and subsidies. You want to donate to politicians? Go ahead. But you don't get to do it with our tax dollars. Not a cent of public money goes to any company that funnels cash into political campaigns.

And states can build their own money through public banks, municipal broadband, and state-owned revenue streams that generate cash without squeezing working people for a dime. The Bank of North Dakota has turned a profit every single year since 1919 and returned $335 million to its state in 2024 alone. The USPS generated $80.5 billion in revenue last year without a cent in tax dollars. We already know public ownership works because it already works. Non-tax revenue is the dirtiest phrase you can say in front of a neoliberal. Pair that with tax structures that put the burden where it belongs, on the rich, and states can fund themselves while caring for their residents and building resilience against federal assaults. Politicians are largely benefitting from the current system so even the well intentioned ones are largely insulated from the harsh realities of our circumstance. That's why its so easy for them to urge caution to “avoid escalation.” They're doing fine and don't want to face the same consequences their constituents are currently experiencing.

They must resign.

Further, when a Supreme Court has fully abandoned the Constitution by any reasonable person's standard, the appropriate and rational response is for states to stop treating its rulings as binding. We did not elect these people. We did not confirm most of them legitimately. And we are under no obligation to obey a court that serves a party rather than a nation.

None of this is radical. All of it uses legal authority that already exists at the state level. Every piece of it could pass in a blue state legislature tomorrow. This is common sense, and the only reason it sounds extreme is that we have spent so long accepting the unacceptable that basic accountability feels revolutionary.

We can do better. We just need some to make a whole lot of resignations happen first.

Let's get after it.

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