Meanwhile in Putin’s Russia you can get jailed for just calling it a war.
All states, regardless of professed ideology, are only concerned with matters that affect their stability. Nobody in US power elite gave an F about people stretching for miles in DC and NYC. And many in the country were not even aware of the scale of the protests.
Look at what any state suppresses without remorse and that is where their vulnerabilities are.
In countries like Russia, China, and Iran, where the notion of a "leader" is significant in maintaining state cohesion, public displays of division undermine the psychological barriers that any person (anywhere) creates internally, in a very similar fashion to taboos. Public rebuke of leadership breaks taboos that maintain the 'magic circle' of power. It is all psychological, with local variations based on history, culture, system timeline, etc.
> Why even stop at war?
Because it's an act. Poverty isn't.
When it did any good, yes, I did my share of protesting. I even did some politics, I'm actually still a party member.