Yes, they’re going to do something even if we don’t react. But no, it’s not necessarily martial law. I feel like people aren’t understanding what “plausible” martial law and the Insurrection Act invocation will really mean. It can and will get unimaginably worse, for not just those who choose it, but for millions of innocent people. It’s possible we can’t avoid that, eventually, but the rational choice is certainly to do what we can to avoid it.
No, it’s not necessarily the rational choice. Not if, for example, delaying to act causes us to lose in the long run, e.g. by giving the fascists more time to shift that Overton window slowly enough. In fact, you yourself acknowledge that in another part of your comment: that we have a limited window of opportunity before hypernormalization kicks in, and we’d better not squander it.
Your theory is valid of course - delaying could work in their favor. But my core point is that if there is citizen-led violence in response to ICE, the argument is moot, because no hypernormalization would be necessary to make a (low-information voter-, or Supreme Court-) plausible argument for martial law.
No, it’s not necessarily the rational choice. Not if, for example, delaying to act causes us to lose in the long run, e.g. by giving the fascists more time to shift that Overton window slowly enough. In fact, you yourself acknowledge that in another part of your comment: that we have a limited window of opportunity before hypernormalization kicks in, and we’d better not squander it.
Your theory is valid of course - delaying could work in their favor. But my core point is that if there is citizen-led violence in response to ICE, the argument is moot, because no hypernormalization would be necessary to make a (low-information voter-, or Supreme Court-) plausible argument for martial law.