The Crack in the Wall: Why Revolutions Need an Elite Split
There is a picture of revolution that almost everyone carries around, and it is wrong. In it, oppression mounts until it becomes unbearable; the people, pushed past endurance, pour into the square in numbers too vast to suppress; the regime, faced with a sea of human bodies, loses its nerve and falls. It is a stirring image, and it flatters us, because it locates the decisive variable in something we can imagine summoning — courage, numbers, the willingness of ordinary people to finally stand up. If only enough of us were brave enough, the wall would come down. ...