They are coming down hard on protestors because the powers the be are scared and weak. They are stretched thin and are incompetent. They lost Vietnam, they lost the Middle East, they lost Cuba, they lost North Korea, they lost Ukraine and they'll eventually lose the world.
You are currently in the claws of the beast and the beast is dying. You will be free of it's clutches, keep biting its hands. It's squeezing you because your bites hurt it. Do not give up.
yeah if it wasn't for climate change or the fact that nearly all parts of the worlds seem to be speedrunning who can take off the lib-mask fastest and mass media wasn't getting better and better at lobotomizing people I could maybe believe that.