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Well, would you be willing to do what they're doing in the name of "winning"? That's the real dilemma. How exactly do you maintain your own morality against an amoral adversary? Is it possible? It's the old trope of "becoming as evil as the evil you're fighting". I certainly admire pacifists for being able to hold to their ideals, but for me there's no easy answer.
Not in the name of "winning" no. But in the name of helping people that the conservatives are trying to hurt, absolutely.
It's not a dilemma at all. Conservatives aren't evil because they are willing to use underhanded to accomplish their goals. They are evil because their goals are evil. Fighting back against them is not even remotely the same.
While it is true that the ends don't justify the means, there has been this moderate liberal overcorrection where people only concern themselves with the "means" and think that it is wrong to ever focus on the "ends". But it's not, the ends matter. The process of government, the "means", isn't actually meaningful in-and-of-itself, it's a tool to manage disputes in a non-violent manner. But it is also a contract, and it only works when all parties agree to it and abide by it.
If the conservatives break the contract, and are hurting people, then upholding the "means" and allowing those people to keep getting hurt rather than putting a stop to it, is complacency and it's own sort of evil.
That's certainly one answer, I agree.
You don't fight this by meeting it head on, letting them choose the battlefield. You fight this by aggressively bringing the fucking banhammer, both figuratively and literally.
You don't just throw the law book at them, you throw the library. You hit them with every possible charge, loitering, jaywalking, not carrying the right kind of insurance, w/e. All of it, and you don't let off, or give an inch. No fucking plea deals in the face of organizers of hate and stochastic terrorists. Sending bomb scares and death threats should be a mandatory five years, doubling if repeated (5>10>20).
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Idealism and realism are, more often than not, opposed for this reason.
Sure, in an ideal world there would simply be no amoral people. We would all be able to agree that x is bad, y is good.
We do not live in an ideal world.