by Will DerNess
Ernie is worried and fired up:
People are getting hurt Bert!
Businesses are being looted!
Innocent people are scared!
Just send in the troops and
clean this mess up already!
Bert, ever the rule follower, fires back:
We have laws for a reason.
There’s a Constitution.
You can’t just let the President
deploy troops into states
without going through proper channels.
That’s not how any of this works.
And in the middle of this
imaginary puppet drama?
Me: caught between them.
On the one hand: I get Ernie’s urgency
He reflects what a lot of us feel:
Fear, frustration, a desire for order now.
I believe President Trump genuinely
wants to protect people in L.A.
from what he sees as lawlessness and chaos.
The impulse to act fast in the name of safety is real.
Then Bert’s voice reminds me:
Intention isn’t enough.
Even a president can’t just
bystep legal boundaries
because he feels strongly about a situation.
That’s why the Posse Commitatus Act exists.
That’s why the Insurrection Act has conditions.
By bypassing those steps,
Trump overstepped his legal authority
Even if his goal was safety.
That’s not just political spin.
A federal judge said it clearly:
What he did was unlawful.
Still caught between Bert’s logic and Ernie’s alarm,
I said something out loud I had never written down before:
Our freedoms are more important than our safety.
We desire to be safe but it we don’t take the risk,
Then we are neither safe nor secure.
It reminded me that fear can’t be our compass.
And comfort can’t be our highest aim.
If we aren’t willing to risk discomfort to defend freedom,
to follow the law, to hold even powerful people accountable
then we lose the very things we claim to be protecting.
This isn’t just politics.
It’s something bigger.
Some original content has been edited for clarity.