Freedom at 4 Below
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
NYT
Moscow
To observe the democratic awakenings happening in places like Egypt, Syria and Russia is to travel with a glow in your heart and a pit in your stomach.
The glow comes from watching people lose their fear and be willing to take enormous risks to assert, not a particular ideology, but the most human of emotions: the quest for dignity, justice and the right to shape one’s own future. I was in Moscow on Saturday morning — just as the demonstrations against Prime Minister Vladimir Putin were gathering. It was minus-4 Fahrenheit. A simple rule: Whenever 120,000 people gather to rally for democracy — and you can see your breath and can’t feel your fingers — take it seriously.
Putin’s allies were predicting that only a small crowd would brave the weather. They were wrong, and it underscores something that a lot of cynics regarding these awakening movements just don’t get. They’re like earthquakes or volcanoes. They are totally natural phenomena, and they emerge from a very deep place in people’s souls. Those mounting them are not sitting around calculating the odds of success before they start. They just happen. Anyone who thinks that President Obama could have saved former President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt is as delusional as anyone who thinks Obama is behind the protests against Putin. We’re all spectators, watching an authentic human wave.
But that pit in the stomach comes from knowing that while the protests are propelled by deep aspirations for dignity, justice and self-determination, such heroic emotions have to compete with other less noble impulses and embedded interests in these societies.
(More here.)
NYT
Moscow
To observe the democratic awakenings happening in places like Egypt, Syria and Russia is to travel with a glow in your heart and a pit in your stomach.
The glow comes from watching people lose their fear and be willing to take enormous risks to assert, not a particular ideology, but the most human of emotions: the quest for dignity, justice and the right to shape one’s own future. I was in Moscow on Saturday morning — just as the demonstrations against Prime Minister Vladimir Putin were gathering. It was minus-4 Fahrenheit. A simple rule: Whenever 120,000 people gather to rally for democracy — and you can see your breath and can’t feel your fingers — take it seriously.
Putin’s allies were predicting that only a small crowd would brave the weather. They were wrong, and it underscores something that a lot of cynics regarding these awakening movements just don’t get. They’re like earthquakes or volcanoes. They are totally natural phenomena, and they emerge from a very deep place in people’s souls. Those mounting them are not sitting around calculating the odds of success before they start. They just happen. Anyone who thinks that President Obama could have saved former President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt is as delusional as anyone who thinks Obama is behind the protests against Putin. We’re all spectators, watching an authentic human wave.
But that pit in the stomach comes from knowing that while the protests are propelled by deep aspirations for dignity, justice and self-determination, such heroic emotions have to compete with other less noble impulses and embedded interests in these societies.
(More here.)
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