Overwhelming use of force is the jump scare of dystopian fiction - cheap, ineffective and stupid.
All these evil regimes only read Babby's First Book of Social Control? Please.
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Violence is always present in maintaining brutish systems, but it moves to the periphery.
The closer you get to the core, the more it's replaced by structures that, except in extreme cases, only ever imply the threat is there.
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If you want an idea of what a dystopia looks like, consider that you live in one.
Oh, you live in a "nice country"? Wonder how that place funds itself.
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Jump scares rely on little else than the startle reflex.
Top-down hyperviolence in dystopic fiction relies on the fantastical idea that people need to be explicitly threatened in order to behave terribly.
