We can look to the civil rights movement as an example of how to successfully enact change. Hundreds of people were killed either directly or indirectly by the state or states inaction. Thousands were injured.
Peaceful, stern protest with minimal escalation is exactly how you keep the support of outside-group ally’s. You need that. You really need that. We are a vast land mass with drastically different cultures throughout.
The alternative is more total bloodshed.
People are going to die, people are going to be injured. All we can do is attempt to control “how many” and “for how many years”.
Let’s say by some magic every person who thinks like you do is suddenly armed, in a group, and is willing to die for their ideas. Let’s say this group escalates the issue with force. How many ICE die? How many of this group dies? Now…. How might politicians spin this conflict? Think it is in your favor? Hell no. The conflict lets them abuse more power. Could it be used to expand executive authority until Trump literally dies of age? How many years is that? Is it worth it to find out?
The US civil war was the single deadliest conflict the US was in. We have only gotten better at killing each other since then.
You may have a different measure of “gone sideways” but I’m guessing thread OP has a much clearer action plan and understanding of just how sideways things can get. Our leader is still “playing” with the idea of a dictatorship. We aren’t actually in one by ‘law’ yet. That distinction is delicate and extremely important.
Sure, let’s look at a more recent example. In 2019 Hong Kong began protesting the CCP. The world watched and threw some support towards the protesters. If it weren’t for the 2020 pandemic that support could have changed into economic sanctions, bad global politics and loss of influence for China.
Those protests were mostly peaceful.
Imagine if they had been massively violent against the CCP military. The world would not have given two shits if the CCP stomped them harder.
Some might consider what Hong Kong was doing as “doing nothing”. Their politicians said a lot of words. And personally, I see a lot of parallels between the current CCP leadership and other dictatorships. So I think the comparison to the current US direction and action is pretty close.
Looks like this all started with “where is the line in the sand” where violence is the only option. I don’t have a concrete answer for that. Violent revolutions don’t tend to happen in developed countries with reasonable economic conditions. Despite high prices, the US is still a developed country with reasonable economic conditions. If we look at the Irish wars of the 90s it looks a lot like gorilla warfare with a lot of collateral damage. Also they didn’t get a lot of outside support, and not much changed.
So, do you want to play the long game or the short one? That determines the line in the sand. And, it is going to be different for everyone. Doubt anyone on the internet can give you a good answer on that, and if they try I’d be super skeptical.