I’m just some powerless dipshit sitting on the sidelines, noting with increasing horror at the degree of fascism endemic in my own liberal base.

You are worse than powerless. You are actively fighting for the fascists with this nonsense rhetoric that encourages voter apathy and encourages people to be idealistic rather than pragmatic.

I help my neighbors when I can. I help strangers when I find them. I volunteer my time and money to keep the homeless out of harm’s way and to warn anyone nearby when I see some ICE thugs on the street.

And yet this is all sweeping the rain if you continue to push for voter apathy or options that give fascists the win.

Brother, what’s your plan? Clap harder? Wave your little foam finger and throw on another layer of liberal merch?

Or maybe you’re hoping to get by as a kapo long enough to see the other side of the regime?

I've stated what I think people should be doing and what I think they should have done before.

If democracy survives, they need to, at the top of their lungs, support the democratic neoliberal party they hate so much, and continue to support it through decades of meritocracy until through primaries, local politics and more, they've shifted them right, as every single time they lose, that is an opportunity for the non progressives in the DNC to shift further right, something naive people online simply refuse to understand.

People just don't like it because its unfun, boring, and takes a long time, but that is the only practical way in a broken, slow system where for the types of changes they want to happen, you literally need progressives to have control over the party, the house, the senate with a super majority and the presidency.

Those are just the facts. Until then, your goals should be to keep the democrats in place to stop the house from being lit on fire.

You don't have to like it, no one does. You just have to realize that that is factually how it is.

Right now though? We're all fucked because you didn't do that before (and because a large portion of normal folks kept treating politics as if it were just this separate thing they could compartmentalize and ignore, thinking the trump admin round 2 somehow wouldn't be worse than 1). Right now, resistance is all you can do. Supporting the mayors, senators and governors who try to resist, protesting, protecting people from ICE through warning, scaring them off, etc.