For what it’s worth, protests in e.g. NYC look exactly like that. The problem comes down to geography. Most countries are small enough that people from around the country can concentrate in the capital for a few weeks and grind everything to a halt, and if they can outlast the terror campaign they can topple a regime.
We can’t concentrate like that in the US. People on the West Coast can’t go en masse to a city 2,500 miles away. It’s like 40 hours of continuous driving. And the contagious esprit de corps that comes with “history happening” en masse is really necessary for protests to work the same way.
Russia and China have the same problem. I suspect it’s a major reason why they’re still authoritarian. What’s remarkable is how long the US hasn’t been authoritarian, given its size. India and Brazil, also large countries, are currently struggling or have recently struggled with authoritarians as well, respectively.
Massive countries are a double-edged sword. They provide a lot of resources and people, but it’s very difficult to hold their governments accountable.
This is one of the main reasons I advocate for creating at least three countries out of the United States: Pacific, Northeast, and Midwest/South.
To extend the analogy, just as we need anti-trust enforcement for corporations that are too large to be held accountable and “too big to fail,” we need the same for countries.
If we ignore Polish solidarity, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Romanian Revolution of 1989, protests against the Soviet Union started in the Baltics and quickly to other occupied countries.
The Baltic Way (Lithuanian: Baltijos kelias; Latvian: Baltijas ceļš; Estonian: Balti kett) or Baltic Chain (also “Chain of Freedom”[1]) was a peaceful political demonstration that occurred on 23 August 1989. Approximately two million people joined their hands to form a human chain spanning 675 kilometres (419 mi) across the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, with a combined population of around eight million citizens, who had been subjected to the Soviet Union’s occupation and communist repression for more than 45 years
The next year brought increasing protests. On 21 January 1990, the anniversary of the 1919 Unification Act between the Ukrainian People’s Republic and West Ukrainian People’s Republic, a human chain of three million people linked the western Ukrainian city of Lviv to Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital. The human chain, which also drew hundreds of thousands of protesters to Sophia Square in Kyiv, demonstrated the popularity of Ukrainian independence outside of Western Ukraine. It was the largest demonstration in late-Soviet era Ukraine.
The protests eventually even reached Moscow, with estimates of protest size ranging from 200 K to 500 K.
I will note that US population density isn’t that much lower than in Ukraine (38 per KM2 versus ~70 per KM2 in Ukraine). Assuming there are 4,500 KM between LA and NY (and 2M persons per 675 km) around 13.3 million people to replicate the Baltic Way, a mere ~4% of the population, compared to 25% participation rate in the Baltics as a whole (that would be about 80 million for the US population).
There are of course many differences between Warsaw Pact/USSR and modern US (with the issue that the Soviet economic system was collapsing and was irreversibly discredited), but that’s always the case with any situation.
The bigger point is that it’s never easy and successful anti-regime protests find a way through the challenges. Sure there is some measure of luck involved, and you have to take risks, but that’s true of literally anything in life.
And yes, the decline of democracy is a global issue. The old system/model is clearly reaching a breaking point. “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: Now is the time of monsters.” We’ll get through it. My only hope is that this breakthrough won’t take 50 years when I’ll be in my 80s.
The Women’s March had 500,000 in DC, 750,000 in LA, 400,000 in NYC, etc. with many other cities. My point is that Lviv to Kyiv is a 6-hour drive. LA to DC is 40 hours, nearly 7 times that distance.
The reason the Soviet Union collapsed was because of a nearly bankrupt Soviet government relaxing its grip under immense international political pressure. That’s not true for the US currently. I don’t mean to diminish it, but ousting this government will take more than linking hands.
For what it’s worth, protests in e.g. NYC look exactly like that. The problem comes down to geography. Most countries are small enough that people from around the country can concentrate in the capital for a few weeks and grind everything to a halt, and if they can outlast the terror campaign they can topple a regime.
We can’t concentrate like that in the US. People on the West Coast can’t go en masse to a city 2,500 miles away. It’s like 40 hours of continuous driving. And the contagious esprit de corps that comes with “history happening” en masse is really necessary for protests to work the same way.
Russia and China have the same problem. I suspect it’s a major reason why they’re still authoritarian. What’s remarkable is how long the US hasn’t been authoritarian, given its size. India and Brazil, also large countries, are currently struggling or have recently struggled with authoritarians as well, respectively.
Massive countries are a double-edged sword. They provide a lot of resources and people, but it’s very difficult to hold their governments accountable.
This is one of the main reasons I advocate for creating at least three countries out of the United States: Pacific, Northeast, and Midwest/South.
To extend the analogy, just as we need anti-trust enforcement for corporations that are too large to be held accountable and “too big to fail,” we need the same for countries.
If we ignore Polish solidarity, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Romanian Revolution of 1989, protests against the Soviet Union started in the Baltics and quickly to other occupied countries.
The protests eventually even reached Moscow, with estimates of protest size ranging from 200 K to 500 K.
I will note that US population density isn’t that much lower than in Ukraine (38 per KM2 versus ~70 per KM2 in Ukraine). Assuming there are 4,500 KM between LA and NY (and 2M persons per 675 km) around 13.3 million people to replicate the Baltic Way, a mere ~4% of the population, compared to 25% participation rate in the Baltics as a whole (that would be about 80 million for the US population).
There are of course many differences between Warsaw Pact/USSR and modern US (with the issue that the Soviet economic system was collapsing and was irreversibly discredited), but that’s always the case with any situation.
The bigger point is that it’s never easy and successful anti-regime protests find a way through the challenges. Sure there is some measure of luck involved, and you have to take risks, but that’s true of literally anything in life.
And yes, the decline of democracy is a global issue. The old system/model is clearly reaching a breaking point. “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: Now is the time of monsters.” We’ll get through it. My only hope is that this breakthrough won’t take 50 years when I’ll be in my 80s.
The Women’s March had 500,000 in DC, 750,000 in LA, 400,000 in NYC, etc. with many other cities. My point is that Lviv to Kyiv is a 6-hour drive. LA to DC is 40 hours, nearly 7 times that distance.
The reason the Soviet Union collapsed was because of a nearly bankrupt Soviet government relaxing its grip under immense international political pressure. That’s not true for the US currently. I don’t mean to diminish it, but ousting this government will take more than linking hands.