On limiting imagination to only what they approve: I’d push back there. I’m door knocking, building mutual aid, working with DSA and WFP, advocating for RCV, trying to build local alternatives to capitalism

None of that is disapproved. I too have done all of those things. I have found them to be cul-de-sacs. In both DSA and WFP the racism is virulent. At least in DSA some chapters have labor organizing groups. But the electoral groups in DSA are toxic, in my experience. As for local alternatives to capitalism, I love me some co-ops, some soup kitchens, and some community gardens, but they're never going to save us.

What I’ve said is that both establishment Democrats and Republicans are spending money to stop him

Which would be relevant if it weren't for the fact that meta-gaming is a thing in politics and they totally understand the idea of amplifying the impression of being resistant. I don't trust it for a second based on what I know of Platner... to wit...

collapsing it into general lesser evil sheepherding requires ignoring everything specific about it.

So here's what I see that's specific about it. Platner was a US soldier who killed brown people under some of the worst conditions in recent memory. He saw the atrocities, and he volunteered for more duty. Then he volunteered for mercenary duty. And you know what he says made him quit? That the mercenary companies were ripping off the US government. Then he became a luxury food farmer. This is the definition of being part of the petite bourgeois. The petite bourgeois are well known internationally and historically to be reactionary fascists because of the economic position. But some of them have historically been class traitors, so we'll have to dig deeper. Why did Platner get into politics? Well, because he didn't like what the politics was doing to his oyster farm. OK, so self-interested, check. Why did Platner get on the radar of Democrats? Well, because he organized his local community. Oh?! That's good right? Well, he organized them to fight a big corporate aquaculture company from ruining his farming business. So..., no. Squarely petite bourgeois. OK. So, at this point we have a murderer who volunteered to murder more and then decided to suck up into his own little world selling luxury food to the bourgeoisie and then got into politics specifically to protect his economic interests. Taken through a historical lens, that's essentially the profile of most Nazi collaborators in Eastern Europe. Then you couple that with the Tottenkopf, the late game removal of said Tottenkopf, and the attempt at downplaying it literally to a question only of whether or not he knew what it was instead of actually addressing its meaning, history, and the impact it could have on others? His entire anti-war stance is limited to America First economic resentment. To me, that's the specifics of the case. And the specific things absent are also telling. Platner is not working with vets, or disgruntled men, or young boys. He's not helping people to deconstruct the patriarchy inside them, the white supremacy inside them, the violence inside them. He's not using ANY of his traumatic experiences to help others. He's on a path from storm trooper to mercenary to petite bourgeois to petite bourgeois politician with the very real potential of unexamined white supremacy, misogyny, and potentially even war crimes.

As for being a sheep-dog? I think it's pretty clear he's attracted a TON of energy that otherwise could have been used to build anti-imperialist movements.

On Bernie: [...] Operating within a broken system under constraint isn’t the same as actively building the infrastructure of harm

When he votes to approve the constant expansion of the military, how is Bernie not actively building the infrastructure of harm? He had no obligation to endorse who he endorsed. You're correct that it's not at the same level as Presidents, but Sanders isn't a President, he's a Senator. And while he's done good, he's made substantial compromises and he's backed away from fights when he had the necessary support from people. He could have sacrificed his career. That's honestly not too much to ask. Many politicians have sacrificed their career to fight for what they believed in. Bernie didn't. He told his supporters that they should all compromise the way he's compromising.

But the grief cycle theory is still making a bet. It’s betting radicalization outpaces harm accumulation.

That's not actually true. The grief cycle theory is a hypothesis for how to fundamentally solve a particular problem, specifically the tendency of euro-centric liberalism to produce fascism.

And that bet has a historical test case that did not go well. Weimar Germany. Massive radicalization. Demonstrated failure of liberal institutions. Widespread grief about the old system. Fascism still consolidated first because it had more organizational infrastructure ready when the window opened. The grief cycle doesn’t just produce revolutionaries, it also produces fascists simultaneously from the same conditions. Whoever is more organized when the crisis peaks wins.

Yeah, see I think the German example shows the opposite. People did NOT go through grief. They wanted to believe. That's why the National Socialists won them over with tales of tradition and white supremacy. They interrupted the grief cycle. But more importantly, Hitler never won a majority electorally and the Nazis still took power. So I agree with you. We need to organize and organize fast. But organizing to vote for liberalism does two things: 1) it interrupts the grief cycle by reinforcing the delusion that there is some aspect of good that can be protected and nurtured in the political system of a genocidal liberal democracy and 2) it steals energy from organizing in ways that are effective against fascism. Organizing to vote has never been effective against fascism historically. If we all abandoned the ballot box and sat each other down and went through the group processing of grief that not only is America gone but that America was never good, never worth saving, and never worth preserving, we would actually have a chance against fascism. The Bolsheviks literally won the day because they said "Russia ought to lose the war". That sort of revolutionary defeatism is what won, not hoping they could steer the military to be 1% less imperialist.

The Vietnamese won the day not because they thought that they could collaborate with the French occupiers to reduce the harm they were doing but because they knew the current form of their country needed to be destroyed. The Chinese won the day not because they thought they could make the Japanese and Europeans slightly more gentle but because they knew they had to go beyond the current form of government and current relationships and destroy them to produce a just society.

Voting for Platner, organizing the vote for Platner, and organizing the fight against Platner critics is not organizing that will fight fascism. It is the definition of sheep-dogging.

However, the people who get deported, lose healthcare, disappear into detention, or die while we wait for sufficient radicalization aren’t theoretical. A movement that has fewer people because the conditions it was waiting to create killed them first isn’t stronger. It’s smaller and facing something more consolidated.

What you don't understand is that this is bi-partisan. Obama deported 100% more than Trump has. Obama appointed Homan to do it. Trump used the same guy. The prison-industrial complex enjoys total bi-partisan support. Mass racialized incarceration enjoys bi-partisan support. Mass surveillance enjoys bi-partisan support. Mass surveillance by the US military on US citizens enjoys bi-partisan support. And here's where I'm going with this:

[Comic]

This comic assumes that the strategy is accelerationism to force people to radicalize by preventing meaningful change through lesser evilism. It's not.

The strategy is consciousness raising to induce people to radicalize by revealing the truth that we are trapped in a Good Cop / Bad Cop situation. No amount of working with the Good Cop will improve our chances of success. The Republicans and the Democrats are 2 PR firms for the ruling class. They play Good Cop / Bad Cop with the citizens. This is why Pelosi said we need a strong Republican party. Because the Republicans and the Democrats across the country golf together, party together, go to school together, work together, eat together, drink together, laugh and cry and celebrate together. They're colleagues. On the election trail, they play up their differences and make moral overtures about how "if you believe this, then you must vote for me", but the outcomes are primarily the same. As PR firms, they each have their own kayfabe. When what is needed is a carrot, like expanding entitlements, the Democrats take up that charge. When what is needed is a stick, like austerity or domestic police violence, the Republicans take up that charge.

I'm not advocating for accelerationism of the decline of social conditions. That's going to happen faster than anyone can imagine. It's accelerating because the US has been outmaneuvered on the world stage and the elite are desperately trying to save their position, so desperate that the financial faction and the cybernetic faction actually had a pretty serious schism for awhile there, though it seems like they may have patched it up and have a tenuous alliance while they make money together manipulating the markets. Social conditions are going to decline no matter what we do. Voting can't change geopolitical conditions. I'm advocating for people to give up the delusion that things like the WFP or a local food co-cop are going to save us, if only we could get people to vote for the candidates that won't smash our delicate sandcastle. That's delusional thinking.