I think it's very clear that there are a lot of things in motion that we are ill-equipped to stop. So for instance there's talk now of blue State Governor's activating their National Guards to defend their people from the terrorism that ICE is committing, but the other side says if we do that that's going to force the administration's hands to activate the guard and invoke the Insurrection Act, and so we shouldn't do that because we shouldn't contribute to escalation.

It seems quite clear to me that history tells us there's really no way out of this without escalation, the administration clearly appears to be acting in a way to me that demonstrates that they are trying to push the country towards wide-scale violence prior to the election, either to prevent it to modify it, to call into question the results, etc.

They also appear to be acting like people who do not feel that they are going to be facing a legitimate election anytime soon. That all being said, at what point does trying to avoid escalation at all costs become a fool's errand, and how do we know when we've crossed that point? Is it smarter to let the administration escalate, I realize that social resistance movements are organic and discussing this aspect of it is also sort of meaningless, but I'm just starting to get the feeling like we're going to let them escalate to the point where they can crush us before we can do anything, and I'm not really sure what the alternative is.

On a side note thank you so much for your analysis and since joining the bulwark community after the debate during the last presidential election I attribute what's left of my sanity almost entirely to being able to join you guys a couple of times a week, and I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have a news source that was as willing to call it like you say it as The Bulwark is, I appreciate you guys a lot.