Many years ago, I had a lunatic roommate who would remove people's clothes from the laundry machines midcycle, throw temper tantrums like a child, and set the thermostat to crazy temps, among other things.
One workaround that one of my sane roommates and I designed for the thermostat problem was to go out and buy a second thermostat. We connected it to the HVAC system and disconnected the existing one but left it on the wall.
The new one was hidden behind the wall, but still accessible through a vented panel. The one on the wall was still powered—it beeped and displayed temps normally. It just was not connected to the system so it would not actually control the heat/air. It was a decoy.
The crazy roommate never figured out that the thermostat did not do anything. The belief of control was maintained, but control was secretly removed. I don't have many practical examples of how to do this, but we should do this to the government.
Give politicians, activists, and corporate media "fake thermostats" to adjust to their hearts' content, so they can exercise their tyrannical dreams without turning our lives into nightmares.
They probably won't figure it out, because they will be too busy celebrating their victories and patting themselves on the back to check the outcomes of their "policy." Even if they did check, they would probably succumb to confirmation bias and attribute the healthy, free society and good economic outcomes to their own tinkering with the fake thermostats. Our response should be to pat them on the head and say "Good job!" like we would to a child pretending to steer the car from the back seat while the adult drives.
