You can take almost any graph of "thing in America goes to shit for all but the very rich" and put a vertical line at the start of it labeled "Ronald Reagan takes office."

You will be right >90% of the time.

The thing is? We could rethink policing as a public service rather than a public force. We could re-imagine the work of policing as a practice that restores broken trust and amends the consequences of harm. Hands that nurture rather than boots that stomp. But we didn't.

What to expect next:

– Escalation framed as “restoring order”
– Mass arrests under vague pretexts
– Targeting of protest organisers and journalists
– Expansion of emergency powers
– Demonisation of dissent as “terrorism”