“You must be my lucky star!” “Star light, star bright!”

I’m not advocating for that, but as the prior poster said, “Sooner or later someone is going to defend their home against these goons, using lethal force” and they’ll use that as pretext to increase the boldness and spread of their violence. At that point with a totalitarian state, what recourse to the law remains?

You could look at Renee Good and see that they need no pretext at all to shoot and kill without repercussions. “Don’t feed the troll” isn’t a great strategy when it’s already gnawing on your leg.

This might be relevant for following ICE around or direct action, but at this point there’s almost zero personal risk from attending something like a rally or a march.

My relatives and even friends my age are afraid to go to protests. They read stuff like this, and it acts as demobilization messaging. In my experience, once you get them to go once they’re no longer afraid to engage, but there’s an initial fear and anticipatory obedience that has to be overcome.

inb4 protests do nothing: getting people to stick their toe in the water helps build commitment that will one day be necessary to gain critical mass for more organized disobedience.