I know this is talked about every day, but I wanna ask, how soon is shit gonna hit the fan? If you asked me 2 years ago...

While we must counter the far-left, I think its equally important to fight off the forces of idpol as well. For example, if they see us defending a white conservative against some racist-ass mexican person, that would look good in many people's eyes.

counter the far-right*

I kinda post this every thread about the next few years, but honestly I have a praxis that could work in the west: I called it "Pessimistic Reformism".

The basic tenets are that you have your Corbyn, Melenchon ect. types get elected. The next step is to not hold any bars and go full fucking Allande with actual demsoc. However, the plan is to bait the deep state into an attempted coup, or some such ation /and be prepared for it/. Creating extra-state structures to fight any coup that is attempted and win it. Winning a counter coup effectively give you the power to institute a DotP right there and then: look At Erdogan's Turkey and the power he now wields. With a DotP in place, and the elements of the deep state that want to overthrow socialism fought and defeated, the real shit can start.

I think you're right about the cops. The right wing groups, as numerous and well armed as they are, don't need to do violence themselves because the cops do it for them. It looks bad on camera but that doesn't mean they won't do it, look at Standing Rock. There was a virtual media blackout about that, and if I recall the Iraq War protests were largely ignored too.
The Democrats are ripe for total collapse but in low level elections they have the advantage of running anonymous empty suits against cartoonishly evil Republicans. That's still enough for a lot of people.

The right-populists will win hard when the next crisis hits, but they're just capitalists so they won't be able to fix shit. People will be disillusioned and they'll be voted out in favor of similarly ineffectual SocDems or Libs. Status quo continues as we slowly slide into corporate technocracy or a collapse. Nothing interesting will happen on the Left because the modern left is a castrated mess and even its relatively more powerful predecessors never accomplished their goal.