Ditto---a thoughtful and insightful post, thank you. Inertia is a problem in so many areas of our lives these days, it seems, from small to large. It's good to hear about the social/political science analysts rethinking their approaches. I hope you can write about this more in the future. As only an observer of current events, I've found historians to be essential the past few years for understanding the now and then and am glad many of them are having their voices heard on mainstream media outlets and more in classrooms.
> When the Russians, Hungarians and Turks who saw their democratic franchise being stripped away rose up in protest, were they gunned down? No. Arrested? Mostly not. They were ridiculed, until they began to ridicule themselves.
They did gun down and particularly arrest, massively so. Not Hungary, because it's really in a class with the others - you should have put Belarus in its stead, and then the pattern is obvious.
Ditto---a thoughtful and insightful post, thank you. Inertia is a problem in so many areas of our lives these days, it seems, from small to large. It's good to hear about the social/political science analysts rethinking their approaches. I hope you can write about this more in the future. As only an observer of current events, I've found historians to be essential the past few years for understanding the now and then and am glad many of them are having their voices heard on mainstream media outlets and more in classrooms.
A really thoughtful post, concluding with the most beautiful of ballads.
But... the premise is wrong.
> When the Russians, Hungarians and Turks who saw their democratic franchise being stripped away rose up in protest, were they gunned down? No. Arrested? Mostly not. They were ridiculed, until they began to ridicule themselves.
They did gun down and particularly arrest, massively so. Not Hungary, because it's really in a class with the others - you should have put Belarus in its stead, and then the pattern is obvious.
And then the comparison with Musk becomes void.