I get the sense that some of the people trying to incite violent action are feeling overwhelmed and powerless due to being so far away from what is happening.

I agree with this, and it shames me that my own humanity is dulled enough by constant challenges to consider it secondary. But a core part of what us anti-fascists actually tend to agree about is that words matter. I’d take it a step further and say that en masse we are individually creating change whether for better or worse, whether we acknowledge we have that power or not.

So when we incite others, we are making the problem bigger even in spite of ourselves, even as much as we claim to want the opposite (a return to sane leadership and at least superficially courteous discourse).

And that’s beyond the obvious logistics: these people arguing for violent resistance never say where or when or how they’d like others to fight, but those of us who have actually been to protests that got heated know it’s not that simple. Agents provocateurs are everywhere, because they want it to get violent, the administration wants to be able to run headlines that paint resistors as disgruntled agitators and hoodlums and troublemakers, not your neighbor or your coworker or your boss. Anything to dehumanize and label “the other”, and violent protests deliver us all up to that end. As soon as we are labeled, we cease to matter.

Compounding this problem, Americans have been firehosed with propaganda and mass manipulation from every direction for over a decade now, including mainstream media. The atmosphere here now is much what I have read of pre-WWII Germany: tight, cautious, foreboding, grim. And angry. Extremely angry. So when I see people who want to light a match to it, it’s almost impossible for me to see that as an act of good faith.

In the meantime, for all the media focus on this unconscionable murder of a citizen just trying to get home (apparently she was shot on the same street she lived) the existing cracks in the administration’s attempts to consolidate power are widening. I’d point you to Heather Cox Richardson, who mentioned in her chat today what the media is downplaying: that the Dems finally pushed through a vote on the healthcare subsidies today, and they got it through on a discharge petition because over a dozen Republicans voted for it in spite of Trump’s threats and Mike Johnson’s best efforts to keep it from a vote. The House is also set to overturn two Trump vetoes (one of which is a Trump revenge veto against Lauren Boebert of Colorado for standing firm on the Epstein files). EDITED to add that they failed to overturn the vetoes, but did get a War Powers Act resolution up for a vote through the Senate, meaning that they will vote on whether further action in Venezuela has to be approved by Congress. This was aided by five Republicans who voted with the Dems.

All of that is a big deal. This complicit Congress, without whom Trump would have nothing, are now working across the aisle on multiple issues in spite of him. Even Minnesota is standing firm and telling the feds that the ICE thug who shot Ms. Good can in fact be charged with murder by the state, and there’s really nothing the feds can do about it. The Supreme Court can only rule on what comes before it; meanwhile, lower courts are overturning his efforts right and left.

In short, he is losing power faster than he can consolidate it, and when it comes right down to it, his goons shot a woman whose only crime was trying to get home from dropping her son off at school. When American beliefs have shifted away from a prevailing wind, it has often been because of a victim like Ms. Good that we can all relate to. Again, the firehose of lies is flooding the media with their alternative narrative, but those videos are circulating faster than they can be shut down – and even the videos only exist because sane individuals were out there blowing whistles to let their neighbors know that ICE was there to begin with. That’s where real change happens, and where true power lies: with the individual.

So yeah. I can’t tell you how bad it is here right now: it is beyond anything I have ever experienced. But resistance is popping up everywhere, and outside of the roughly 20%-25% that are always going to support authoritarian rule in any society, there is no real support for him. That’s another reason why I’d tell people here to incite violence to knock it off: they could actually be part of the growing resistance if they let go of the rage and think about what’s next. Wisdom and rage rarely accomplish the same thing, and we’ve only just started to fight back. Anyone who wants to fight in the street will likely have their opportunity to do so, unfortunately. But right now it will only fuel the oppressor.

Thank you for your courteous reply; I was kind of shocked to see it, honestly. I appreciate it, more than you know.

And that’s just a lie. The legal system IS keeping up. The National Guard is NOT being redeployed. Hell, the NG isn’t even in Menneapolis, though Gov. Walz has put it on standby as is his prerogative as governor.

Ghandi is a great story, but guess who he had as a counter balance? The stick.

Then you should go back and reread that story, because “the stick” was hundreds of years worth of the British coming down on Indians with absolute brutality, the Indians rising up again with massive brutality of their own, and then the British coming back across with escalations like Amritsar.

What got the British their asses handed to them after hundreds of years of this bloody back and forth was a line of non-violent protesters who simply went to the beach to make salt. Thousands of them. Who at the end of their march walked straight into billy clubs without ever raising a hand or a stick.

You literally do not know the history you to seek to (mis)represent here. Hundreds of years of what you propose did nothing; it only secured the British power more firmly than ever. And it’s not just India; we have some semblance of civil rights here because of Martin Luther King, Jr. doing the same thing.

The line of violence is not for you to propose to others. It is for you to choose for yourself, and stop trying to get others to bleed in your stead.

I did respond with substance; you chose to reply to a different comment. You are the one without substance: all general urgings toward violence – “We can either let them, or we can do something about [it]” – but nothing specific. I referred to very specific points in history, and when and why they worked, while you blew right past that to be able to remain in your generalities.

But what I’d really like you to explain, which you cannot and never will, is how and why it is a winning measure to respond to provocation with violence when your violent response is exactly what they want, and will absolutely be used to cement their power further.

I just posted the court order that literally says the National Guard were posted to Portland, Oregon to quell existing violence. They got kicked out based on the fact there was no violence.

Your answer to this is to call others, not yourself, to unspecified violence.

So I’d say we’re not on the same team, regardless of what you write or how old your account (or you) are, because what you propose will only set cities on fire and cement this administration’s hold on power. As actual history shows.

I’ve come to the conclusion that you’re just writing because you already know this crew is drowning under the weight of their own unpopularity, and you are terrified they will get thrown out before they really get cemented in. Or like some others, you really do want to see American cities burn. Or like even others, you’re terrified because you left your regional and national security to the US for far too long and never took action to secure yourselves against the neighbor in your own backyard (Putin).

Whatever you’re writing to prove, you’ve failed. And yeah, your 22-hour old account is kind of a dead giveaway that this isn’t your battle to fight – or rather, to get others to fight for you.

What’s your fuckin’ point? You want people to start pouring into the streets with AR15’s, hand guns, and pipe bombs and do what, start attacking ICE facilities around the country? Besides the fact that it’s incredibly stupid and it would just be seen as wonton violence by a majority of the population, and that such a movement would immediately be crushed by people who are just fucking itching for a fight, you can’t have a revolution without the backing of a significant portion of the military. Things are bad, but they’re not that bad yet. Once economic disparity reaches a critical mass and people start getting Great Depression levels of pissed off, like food riots level pissed off, and we’re not far from that, if Trump starts using the military or ICE to put down citizens en masse, then you’ll start to see conditions that develop into the type of thing you’re talking about. Until then, and probably especially then, because the secret police will black bag you, it’s probably best to not make vague and ill considered overtures for violence in the streets.