Will Bunch expresses what I’ve been thinking since Trump was elected. American democracy is under attack from within. The fascists who yearn for an authoritarian government in the media are promoting it, and the media who supposedly don’t support it fail to recognize it. They are busy trying to follow the political playbook of the 20th century.
People are probably better at explaining this than I, but I personally would only be violently-defensive is when its clear (mabe even easy for an random person off the street to agree that) an intimidation or harassment campagn, power grab or other violent attacks on basic liberties is happening.
The problem is everyone has a different metric for that, and not everyone’s metric is a good one. The Jan 6 people thought they justified too. They were wrong and so is the person I was replying to. This is why we have a legal system. We all agreed on a metric, we all agreed that the state should have a monopoly on violence when that metric is met.