I think you are onto something with the revulsion for the carceral state. I think that is the flashpoint, the lightning rod that so much is connected to... whether it be brutality, extrajudicial executions, immunity, to the Cop City/urban pacification, militarization and kill house training with international murder squads and the colonial apparatus, or the judicial corruption, prisons with private equity, criminalizing immigration, and forced labor systems. such a high portion of the population is touched by this institution and everyone but the most elite fear it reaching, without accountability, into their lives.

a thing about fear and the socialization of masculinity is that we are indoctrinated not to acknowledge our fears, even to ourselves, creating a blind spot for us conceptually. this is confused with "strength" and it is sold to everyone as the preferred response to feelings of fear.

I think it bubbles to the surface as anger when it finally erupts. what I remember most from 2020 was the anger and how righteous it was. we walk around for years with this lead ball burning our insides, but we can't allow ourselves to admit it. so when the moment comes where we feel able to strike at those who put it there and rid ourselves of it, there are people from many walks of life erupting with fury.

yes the apparatus was successful in stamping it down, in the middle of a global pandemic no less when we held our breaths at an unseen killer ripping through us. that's what I remember most: the way the system didn't care much about the pandemic until it could be used to discourage the logic of protest and direct action by large gatherings.

combined with media framing desperately trying to make cops look reasonable (while they are arrested and peppered with rubber bullets) and protestors as crazed maniacs, they managed to diffuse many into the ballot box. and then we got Cop Prez and Cop Prez Jr by fiat.

personally, I think they got really lucky in 2020 with the constellation of events around the George Floyd protests, and all we need is one moment where their luck doesn't hold. that phrase: they have to get lucky every time, we only have to get lucky once.

we all know they are going to kill someone publicly again in front of cameras with people pleading for them to live. the system needs its unrepentant sadists and they will never be muzzled for long. once it happens and goes wide, we will be right back where we were, in the full knowledge that nothing fundamentally changed.