I think community organizing is the key. Whether it is direct participation, or supporting local/independent initiatives, or trying to influence the established parties in your area. The bad actors thrive on division, misinformation, inaction, and apathy. And the common refrain is that people don’t have the resources, time or bandwidth to educate themselves or to contribute. More people need to see the redistribution of wealth upwards as a form of control. Measures that erode workers rights, equality, etc. further disempowers anyone not in the upper echelons [even those in the upper class but not in the ruling class]. We need to be willing to make sacrifices/concessions if it will benefit those with fewer advantages than ourselves specifically because they make up the foundations that allow us to exist as high up the chain as we currently are [even if that doesn’t feel very high]

Given what they said regarding disagreeing with Trump’s current actions, why did you feel like your response was the best way to engage?
After the repeated examples over the last decade, I think everyone in the world should have learned by now that shame, aggression, and shade dripping with schadenfreude doesn’t change opinions or actions.
If you are truly concerned about making things worse for others, you might want to examine the way you interact with other human beings. Because the short term dopamine isn’t worth contributing to the division that’s been made worse by targeted, algorithmic influence.
We are all being fed a curated version of reality designed to appeal to our biases and stoke fear and outrage. I think we need to learn to show some grace to people who we don’t fully agree with, who are trying to reach across the divide, and who might be coming to terms with the ways in which they may have been misled or caught up in an enticing movement.
And I’m not saying this is easy. It certainly isn’t satisfying. I love barbed and bitter witicisms. Being shitty to someone who I feel deserves it scratches this itch in my brain that I am neither proud of, nor can deny. But it’s also the definition of being selfish, since it helps no one. So idk, you do you I guess?

In this economy?

Someone should tell him that the best way to get back at Elon would be to start taxing billionaires.

The problem with “they’re just incompetent”, is that it let’s malicious people feign stupidity. And if it is a combination, it doesn’t matter which aspects are one or the other. They are dangerous all the same and shouldn’t be allowed to continue hurting people. But a combination of apathy, indoctrination, and infiltration means they’ll likely never see any real consequences. Or if they do, they were likely expendable and their excision doesn’t accomplish anything. People need to, at a minimum, vote. And preferably get more involved. Organize. Start local.