Heresy in the 17th century actually wasn’t as big a deal as it was in the past. This was a couple centuries after the Protestant Reformation shattered the Catholic hold on Europe, leading to decades of war in which millions died, eventually resulting in the shitloads-of-denominations we see today, where almost all of them are “heretics” of some sort to all the other ones. I mean, modern day Mormonism isn’t really even a monotheistic religion anymore. This all has its roots in the breaking of Catholic domination back in the early 1500s.

One major issue with this: The left and right are fighting for different things.

The far right would ultimately like a military dictatorship of sorts. In order to pull this off in a way the majority of the public would accept, they need people to be afraid, to have violent enemies that can only be defeated with organized military force.

The left, on the other hand, is fighting for civilian rule. This is based on the idea that laws need to apply to everyone, and that military force should not be used to suppress the public at large. In order to pull this off, it must be true that military force applied domestically is not actually necessary to have a functioning society.

Because these goals are fundamentally different, the methods of accomplishing them become different by necessity. Some methods strengthen and empower the goals of the right, other methods strengthen and empower the left. These are distinct, and it’s very important not to be manipulated into playing into the hands of your opponent.

You don’t need to have full mutually assured destruction for nukes to operate as a deterrent. It’s a matter of degrees, rather than some sort of all-or-nothing safety.