Aside from legal challenges, those who didn’t vote for the man have little means of resisting – and are frankly still in shock

It is a strange effect of the second Trump presidency that, where Donald Trump and his allies know the ropes this time round and have grown in assertiveness, their opposition seems paralysed, rather than emboldened, by experience. After Trump’s inauguration in 2017, millions of people took to the streets. This week, a lot of Trump-haters in Washington simply skipped town for the inauguration weekend. This, it seems to me, is less an indication of resignation than caution and lingering shock. Whatever happened last time didn’t work. So now what?

It is an unnerving position, not knowing what to do, and in this case requires a lot of self-soothing in the form of mantras, “It’s only four years”, and “He’s a lame duck, anyway” (because he cannot serve another term). Opposition will not be about sending a message through the medium of public demonstration – the time for that, clearly, has passed, not least because Trump won the popular vote.

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist