Break Constitution in Case of Emergency

Americans are being presented with an ugly logical fallacy: Either Trump gets total executive control, or society collapses.

It seems like I can forget about normal days during this administration. I sat down this morning hoping for a quiet day — maybe throw on some cartoons in the background while I caught up on grading — maybe a little Batman: The Animated Series, something with a villain who doesn’t pretend to be the hero. But instead, I’m reflecting on the President’s decision last week to deploy Marines in Los Angeles, another round of emergency declarations, and Marco Rubio saying things that made my political science degree physically ache.

If you’ve been watching Republican leaders twist themselves into knots, defending power grabs they once claimed to oppose — don’t worry. You’re not imagining it. You know it’s performative, you know it’s B.S. — and maybe you just haven’t had time to pull out your rhetorical scalpel and name it. That’s where I come in. I’m just a political science professor who’s been around long enough to recognize a playbook when I see one — and I keep receipts.

Let’s start with what happened last week. The President of the United States sent U.S. Marines and National Guard troops into Los Angeles during peaceful demonstrations, citing a “national emergency” that legal experts across the spectrum are calling unconstitutional. A federal judge initially blocked the deployment, but the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has since issued a temporary stay on that ruling — allowing the federal presence to continue while the legal fight plays out. But the damage is already done. For Trump and his enablers, the optics were the point. Strength. Order. Boots on the ground. You know, like when Kristi Noem executed her dog to show “dominance.” Same energy.

This isn’t about safety. It’s about submission. What we’re witnessing is argumentum ad metum — Latin for “appeal to fear”— wrapped in camo and stunt cast with soldiers. And the people applauding it the loudest? The same clowns who used to pound the table about federalism like it was a religion. Now they cheer for federal overreach like it’s a Monster Jam rally.

And this is where preference falsification comes in. Political scientist Timur Kuran coined the term to explain what happens when people fake their beliefs out of fear. Marco Rubio knows this is B.S. Lindsey Graham knows this is B.S. Hell, they used to tweet about how much they hated this exact brand of executive overreach. Now they’re backstage asking for selfies and making sure they’re still on the Christmas card list.

This isn’t ideology. It’s career preservation. The longer they cling to Trumpism, the more they confuse loyalty with logic. They’re not strategizing. They’re just trying not to get ratioed by Don Jr. on Truth Social. It’s like watching a frat hazing ritual where the pledges are all senators and the beer funnel is full of authoritarian Kool-Aid.

And when they do speak, it’s like a fallacy variety hour. Rubio’s recent comments about habeas corpus — saying it’s “not a big deal” to suspend it during emergencies—are a masterclass in reductio ad absurdum, a rhetorical move where an argument is pushed to absurdity to justify the unjustifiable. You know who else treated habeas corpus like an optional feature? Every regime that wanted unlimited power and didn’t want to explain who they locked up or why.

Then comes the false dilemma — a logical fallacy that falsely presents two extremes as the only possible outcomes. Either Trump gets total executive control, or society collapses. No mention of courts. No mention of Congress. Just “let him cook,” like we didn’t all just see what happened the last time he had the oven mitts.

It works because it looks tough. This is what I call “obedience optics”— the pageantry of power without the policy. Just look at Trump’s sad little birthday military parade, where a handful of troops and armored vehicles wandered D.C. in front of a crowd that barely noticed. It wasn’t strength. It was cosplay with a security budget. That’s why J.D. Vance and Lindsey Graham shout into microphones like they’re auditioning for a WWE heel turn. They’re not debating. They’re just doing bad improv with taxpayer-funded microphones.

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Then there’s the No True Scotsman fallacy — now with extra RINO seasoning. Any Republican who still believes in things like courts, law, or objective reality? Not a “real” conservative. The new rule is: You either bend the knee or get dragged by Charlie Kirk. It’s ideological purity with the intellectual depth of a Newsmax bumper sticker.

All of this is preference falsification in action. The smart ones are pretending. And they know they’re pretending. But they think if they just keep nodding, they’ll be spared. That’s not leadership — it’s hostage behavior. You’re not convincing anyone. You’re just clapping louder so Dear Leader doesn’t notice you hesitated.

Eventually, the pretending rewires your brain. You stop asking questions. You start saying things like “emergency powers are just efficient government” with a straight face. You confuse applause with agreement and slogans with law. You become a bootlicker in a flag pin.

The real emergency isn’t the protest. It’s the precedent. We’ve got eight national emergencies declared already this year, and the only thing being protected is Trump’s image. You can’t govern by decree and still call it a democracy. You can’t send troops to a state without permission and still pretend you care about “small government.” And if the response to every challenge is an emergency declaration, we’re not in a republic — we’re just in a reality show with worse lighting.

And what happens to the sellouts? They don’t get glory. They get history’s side-eye. Graham, Rubio, and the rest won’t be remembered as power brokers — they’ll be remembered as accessories. Not to greatness, but to the slow dismantling of the very institutions they once pretended to revere. You don’t get a monument for betraying the Constitution. You get a paragraph in a political science textbook labeled “co-conspirators.”

Because at the end of the day, you can’t tweet your way out of history. When the dust settles, the people who showed up with courage will be remembered — and the ones who auditioned for authoritarianism will be remembered, too. Just not in the way they hoped.

Kristoffer Ealy is a political science professor who teaches at California State University Fullerton, Ventura College, Los Angeles Harbor College, and Oxnard College. He is the author of the upcoming book Political Illiteracy: Learning the Wrong Lessons.