>Tanks are a bit showy when you can just have the police and National Guard shoot protestors without consequence:

uhh... what? Have you checked the "legal action" section?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings#Legal_act...

or did you expect that the guards' heads be put on a pike?

Oh, and don't forget that we can talk about what happened freely. Try doing that in China.