Do you remember the Year of the Protester? The #Occupy, the Spanish Indignados, the Russian pro-democracy protests, the Canadian student protests?
All of these protesters failed to achieve anything whatsoever. They played at activism, tweeted, Facebooked, postured, and receded into oblivion without having achieved anything.
Out of all of them, the only successful protest was the one in Ukraine. It’s a slow, painful process, but Ukrainians are actually managing to transform their society. The reason why Ukrainians are successful where the American, Canadian, Spanish, British, etc protesters failed is that Ukrainians decided not to present the universe with vague supplications to “end greed”. Instead of begging a benign paternal authority to make everything good, they are starting to realize that the only authority over their lives is themselves. And that’s an enormous breakthrough.
Clarissa's Blog 
“Instead of begging a benign paternal authority to make everything good, they are starting to realize that the only authority over their lives is themselves”
And a lot of people (in Russia and in the West) will never forgive them for it.
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Exactly. In a weird way, Ukrainians seem more ready for the collapse of the nation-state than many other people.
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Why do some people have an authoritarian celing over their heads, whilst others do not? I suspect it is due to their blissed out states. If the Papa figure is really nasty and downright ugly, you are not going to desire his ceiling of authority over your head. But if you have basically been blissed out by paternal benevolence, you will still only play at revolution, because a large part of you will have figured out you’ve got a pretty good deal.
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