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If there is a barrier to Trump resurrecting the massive deportations of the Bush and Obama years, though, it lies in the independence of local law enforcement. To override them is certainly possible. But it would require a vast expansion in federal power that, under any other circumstances, would be anathema to small-government conservatives worried about Washington overreach and rejecting the judgment of local police. The self-proclaimed law-and-order candidate would have to act against the wishes of police chiefs. Trump couldn’t persuade voters in those places to support his candidacy. How much punishment is he willing to inflict on them to ensure they assist in an unprecedented eviction of the American populace?

We must begin again. Any hope for a restoration of civil society will come from small, local groups and community organizations. They will begin with the mundane tasks of holding back the expansion of charter schools, enforcing environmental regulations, building farmers markets, fighting for the minimum wage, giving sanctuary to undocumented workers, protesting hate crimes and electing people to local offices who will seek to mitigate the excesses of the state. “We have to reconstitute a civil society,” Schrecker said. “Intermediary institutions like the academy and the media have been hollowed out. Certainly, journalism is on life support. We have to resuscitate organizations and institutions that have atrophied.” “There is an attack on the American mind,” she said. “A lot of what we’re seeing with Trump is the product of 40 years of dumbing down.”

We must not become preoccupied with the short-term effects of resistance. Failure is inevitable for many of us. Tyrants have silenced voices of conscience in the past. They will do so again. We will endure by holding fast to our integrity, by building community and by spawning new institutions in the midst of the wreckage. We will sustain each other. Perhaps enough of us will endure to begin again.