I don’t know if there’s anything we can do, at least in the short term. This is the dictatorship playbook, and Americans have long been so sheltered from that, they are not even aware it exists, let alone recognize it when it’s in front of their face.
But you’re right: you and I and the rest of us have no power as individuals to effect change. Our power lies in our acting as a collective. But that’s uniquely difficult to achieve in this country because American ideology elevates individualism above all else and discourages—and even occasionally criminalizes—collectives. Remember how big an insult it was meant to be by dismissing Obama as a “community organizer”? Because community is only a few letters from communism, amirite?
As far as Trump being on the hook, I don’t mean prosecuting him or anything like that. I’m talking about the simple act of disavowing that he has any responsibility for words coming out under his name, if we were to learn it’s not really him doing the actual writing. But of course it is if they come out under his name, even if he never saw the words before they went out. They’re still his words, and he’s responsible for them. We can’t let him off the hook by saying he’s too stupid to think up words. That’s basically infantilizing him. By excusing him for things done in his name that people believe he’s not capable of concocting himself, we’re letting him off the hook. I’m just saying, don’t let him off the hook. He’s not just “following orders”.