protest

An Iraqi Youth Uprising against a Dire Economy and Foreign Intervention

She had moved to Germany to be a writer but quickly found there wasn’t very much to write about. Germany was calm. The people were friendly and straightforward. If you managed a few words of German they would say, “Your German is very good.” When you gave them exact change they would smile.

On the weekend of August 12, 2017, Charlottesville, Virginia, became a metonym, thus joining that select fraternity of cities whose meaning is tied to singular events.

A revolution is an opinion that has got its hands on some bayonets. So said Napoleon Bonaparte, who knew about such things. Fair enough: Throughout history, most revolutions have been brought about at the point of a spear or the end of a gun barrel—for, Mohandas Gandhi and Václav Havel notwithstanding, violence often precedes political change.