this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2026
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I'm genuinely losing my mind at this take. For the last 13 months we've seen thousands of human people walked to their death -- watched planes of human beings take off and return empty; and still half of the comments I see that suggest taking action beyond peaceful marches and waiting for the 2026 midterms get this "smarter than thou" smug response from people, some claiming to be 50501 liberals. Sometimes it's, like, 15 lines and a song quote; with the occasional ALL CAPS "DO NOT TAKE THE BAIT".
People are dying, folks; now. Come to reality. A clash with ICE, especially in the first months when they were untrained and barely armed, wouldn't have accelerated anything--because we didn't have that and yet we are here. This mythical "Insurrection Act" invocation wouldn't have caused the terrorism we are witnessing now; nor the deployments in LA or Portland. Yes, people will die in clashes with the state; but what's the alternative? Letting people die in raids from the state? We watched camera footage with video of pro-Palestinian activists getting disappeared. We've seen masked agents killing hundreds of people across the states, every month. We've seen them raid neighborhoods, and pull people into vans. We've seen our police watch, do nothing, then arrest the bystanders for "causing a disturbance". Every. Day.
The part of me that is clinging onto some partial hope in human nature wants to blame this widespread passivity propaganda for the reason it took a year to have the resistance effort in Minneapolis, which there had been nothing like until that point. Really, though, I sense the real reason behind these arguments and the wider inaction, is that the targets of ICE have been predominantly people of color, and mainly Hispanic folks. So, too, were the kids in cages through the first Trump and Biden administrations.
I understand that Holocaust poem in a depth that I just didn't understand before. I understand the Holocaust documentaries and testimonies I've watched in a depth I hadn't gotten before.
You aren't outsmarting the Republicans by standing back as they kill thousands; tens-of-thousands; hundreds-of-thousands of people of color. You're giving them exactly what they wanted: A “second American Revolution”; [white]-bloodless “if the left allows it to be.”
Nor would blindly killing the Repubs/Nazis. All it will do is start a massive killing frenzy. A killing frenzy the government wants and is trying to provoke
As I said in my comment, the killing frenzy is here. This government has become more emboldened than ever in oppressing and brutalizing us citizens because they've been taking slow steps toward fascism for decades. The War on Drugs; Bush v. Gore; The Patriot Act; the reporters of Ferguson; Trump's first term executive order overreach; the fucking Insurrection—This year: DOGE; ICE; CECOT; Tariff War; Plus we're just now seeing everything in the Epstein files which was happening as well for decades.
Decades of peaceful protesting and it hasn't worked. We've only been losing ground. 2015's gay marriage decision was a fluke; and the Affordable Care Act was more of a duct-tape fix than true reform.
We've had two real assassinations in the USA: Brian Thompson in December 2024, and Charlie Kirk in September 2025. Do you think the government wanted either of those? Judging from the bipartisan condemnation, absolutely not. Folks like me are not saying to mow down a red state neighborhood. We're saying to resist the ICE deployments, physically, when they show up.
You're right that the US government wants a killing frenzy. It's the one they are enacting, every day of the majority of this term. Even if Republicans' intent in disappearing these tens-of-thousands, maybe hundreds-of-thousands of people is to bait a reaction from people, what is the alternative? We... let tens of thousands of human beings get disappeared? The dehumanization of these victims is sickening and yet it continues to be perpetuated by "holier than thou" liberals who either don't realize what they're suggesting, or don't care.
So, let's say no one does anything in retaliation. Why wouldn't they just make shit up? Well.. the answer is, they have. We've got Stephen Miller on FOX ranting about how blue cities were littered with "body after body after body" under Biden; talking about how Portland would burn to the ground every night. It's all lies. They lie. We know they lie. Their biggest ally, big tech, spent billions of dollars over the last several years making machines that fake evidence and gaslight people. The White house has used AI-generated images and videos to humiliate activists and produce propaganda.
IF we ever claw back our nation from fascism, and that is a big IF, scholars will ask why no one did anything—how this could happen with the open internet, a tool believed to be able to mitigate and prevent the rise of fascism. This constant fearmongering about the "Insurrection Act" and insistence to not react is a significant part of that answer, and I will preach that to the grave.