The imperial war machine is constantly lobbying for its interests and against sentiments that may disrupt its aims. It is virtually always successful on the national stage, but local organizing can and has massively disrupted supply chains and manufacturing centers. This is why a lot of environmentalism actions are now criminal, even treated as terrorism: they did and do actually force a response, and that sucks away resources from the top in a lose-lose material exchange but with the benefit of innoculating the public from the notion that things are going well, that those companies are on their side, etc. It also teaches your org members that there is no bottom to the depravity to which capital will respond to disruption. Gotta plan accordingly to ensure actions have informed consent, of course - and a clear-eyed goal.

Anyways, the war machine lobbies because they do actually perceive a need to “grease the wheels” to get things going. They don’t throw money at think tanks and Senators and PR campaigns for nothing. And that can be undermined with several aforementioned benefits.

And no, I agree, most Americans are confused and easily led into fashy thinking and frothing for genocide. The actions I’m talking about don’t have naive goals like, “we will convince everyone to oppose US imperialism on principle”. Innoculation can be as simple as being tear gas seeping in your window while the cops beat protesters. The liberal inside may not join the protesters (yet), but they do see the lopsided reaction and a few gears start to turn.

These are the kinds of things we use to peel away libs person by person to build power. Especially younger people.