They don't want to be "one of the first to die in service to their country". When I turned 18 I went off to basic training and from there went on to fight in one of our longest armed conflicts in modern history. You can't peacefully protest away tyrants. People don't like to be told that.
those on the front lines should be protecting their fellow protestors imo. civil disobedience can come in many forms, from general noncompliance and striking to sabotage and depletion of the enemy's resources (like waymo cars/property of those in power/police cars). of course, I'm not advocating-
for anything in specific :3c but all resistance is good resistance in my eyes, as long as there's enough of a diversity of tactics
unfortunately the left seems to be waiting for someone else to fix the problem. They don't seem to realize they are that someone else at this point in time. Maybe they should think about what the history books will say.
big thing is, "the left" is such a splintered group that you can't really describe it as a singular entity. but because of this there are all sorts of resistance popping up. for example in LA, peaceful protestors got beat up and rounded up by the police, and then anarchocommunists started throwing-
firecrackers at the cops. nothing is ever black and white, but the true poisoning of the well comes from high class centrist "pundits" saying that the left will win only if they give up on minorities
also you're right a bunch of the people on the left hope that all you need to do is vote the bad away, but not everyone on the left is like that. you see more initiative from leftists in punk/rave/general underground scenes