The Rule of Law Is Our Raincoat
And it’s being ripped to shreds
In the United States, we grow up believing that the rule of law is the bedrock of our freedom. We are taught that it is the invisible but powerful thread that weaves our society together — protecting us as individuals and preserving our fragile, hard-won constitutional democracy.
The rule of law is what separates a nation governed by reason from one ruled by impulse or brute force. It protects the weak from the powerful, the minority from the majority, the individual from the mob. Without it, we are merely a collection of competing factions — vulnerable to the rise of autocrats who promise order but deliver tyranny.
But here’s the thing about the rule of law: it’s a lot like a trusted raincoat.
You don’t think about it much on sunny days. It’s stashed away, maybe forgotten at the back of the closet. But when the storm clouds roll in — when power is abused, rights are threatened, or institutions begin to fail — you reach for it. You expect it to shield you.
That’s when you discover whether it has held up… or whether someone’s been poking holes in it all along.
Holes in the raincoat
The current administration has taken to our legal framework like a vandal with an ice pick — quietly, systematically poking holes in the constitutional protections that once guarded us all.
These aren’t just policy disagreements. They are attacks on due process, equal protection under the law, and the idea that no one — not even a sitting president — is above accountability.
In recent months, we’ve witnessed brazen attempts to undermine the independence of the judiciary, to target critics through extralegal means, and to use the vast machinery of government not for the common good but for personal or political revenge.
There have been threats of retribution against prosecutors, judges, journalists, military officers who dared to uphold their oaths to the Constitution rather than their loyalty to a man, and even United States Senators.
Let’s call this what it is: a slow-motion unraveling of the rule of law.
Each time a government official is pressured to ignore the law in favor of obedience, a new hole is torn in the raincoat. Each time a court ruling is disregarded, or a federal agency is repurposed to serve partisan ends, the fabric of the law weakens. And each time the American people shrug and move on, the damage spreads.
When the storm hits
History teaches us that democracies don’t usually die in dramatic coups. They decay gradually, hollowed out from within until one day the institutions that should protect us fail to function at all.
By the time the storm arrives — whether in the form of a national crisis, an economic collapse, or a contested election — it’s too late.
You reach for your raincoat, and it’s nothing but tatters. You’re left exposed, wondering how it all happened, and why no one raised the alarm in time.
But some of us have been raising the alarm. And still, far too many Americans remain unmoved.
The passivity is what’s most frightening. We’re not talking about small, obscure policy shifts here. We are witnessing a direct and ongoing attempt to discredit, disable, and dominate the legal institutions that hold the powerful accountable. And yet much of the public greets this with little more than a shrug — or worse, a cheer.
Maybe we’ve forgotten what democracy feels like. Maybe we’ve grown too comfortable, too cynical, too distracted. Or maybe we’ve become so divided — tribalized by media silos, driven by fear, and numbed by outrage — that we no longer trust anyone or anything enough to act in defense of something as abstract as the rule of law.
But make no mistake: this isn’t about abstractions. When the law fails, people suffer. Not elites. Not cable news pundits. Ordinary people. People like you and me. When constitutional rights are selectively applied or arbitrarily revoked, when loyalty becomes more valuable than legality, none of us are safe.
The autocrat rises
It’s no accident that autocrats throughout history have wrapped themselves in the language of salvation. They promise to “fix” everything. To drain the swamp. To cut through red tape. To restore order. But what they really seek is unchecked power — and that requires tearing down the very structures designed to restrain them.
Our would-be strongman is no different. He tells us that only he can fix the nation’s problems, that the courts are rigged, the prosecutors corrupt, the media evil, and the opposition illegitimate. He doesn’t need the rule of law. He is the law. His grievances are to be our grievances. His enemies our enemies. His word final.
And far too many Americans, weary of gridlock and dysfunction, seem willing to go along.
This is how democracies die: not with a bang, but with acquiescence.
I haven’t given up. Have you?
I, for one, am not ready to surrender our Constitution. I’m not ready to bow to a man who sees our founding principles as obstacles to his ambition. And I am certainly not ready to hand over the future of this country to an autocrat who believes justice is just another tool of personal vengeance.
I took an oath as a commissioned officer in the United States Army — to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. That oath didn’t come with an expiration date.
I believe many Americans still feel that same duty in their bones, even if they struggle to put it into words. The question is: how do we wake them up before the storm hits?
Re-stitching the fabric
If we are to preserve this great democratic experiment, we must act now to restore the integrity of our legal institutions. That starts with speaking out — loudly, clearly, and consistently — against the erosion of constitutional norms.
It means demanding accountability not just from our political leaders, but from the corporations, media outlets, and institutions that enable their abuses. It means showing up — not only at the ballot box, but in our communities, our workplaces, and our public discourse.
We must also make the case that the rule of law is not some abstract principle for lawyers and judges — it’s the raincoat we all depend on when the skies turn dark. And right now, it’s leaking.
Our job is to patch it, stitch it, reinforce it — and refuse to let anyone else tear it further.
Because if we give up now — if we accept that autocracy is inevitable, or democracy too broken to fix — then we will have proven unworthy of the freedoms we inherited. We will have failed not only ourselves — but the generations who sacrificed for this republic — and the generations yet to come.
But I don’t believe that’s who we are.
At least, not yet.
