That went to some weird places

- Modern protests have largely been peaceful. There's a protest every week nowadays, and the only violent ones I can recall in the past few years were Baltimore and Charlottesville. Smaller scale violence does occur at these protests, but it's usually a few bad actors.

- It's a common and well documented tactic for governments to send provocateurs to delegitimize protests

- Protest organizers know better than anyone the importance of getting out the vote, and are often part of that effort. Also, the midterm elections are still a year away.

- Uh not even gonna touch your identity politics rant tbh