Cyncicsm is the belief that you don't think there is anything worth fighting for. Cynicism is an admission that you prefer to submit than fight. Most of the wor

Cyncicsm is the belief that you don't think there is anything worth fighting for. Cynicism is an admission that you prefer to submit than fight. Most of the world looked at Ukraine and cynically said that Zelenskyy would flee and Ukrainians would not fight because they themselves would not be willing to fight. Few people have values they would consider dying for. Few people would put themselves at risk for another person. Few people would be willing to die building a better world that they won't get to experience. Yet Ukrainians are fighting for western values right now. They are fighting for a government in which they are a person and not a thing. They are fighting for a government that does not treat them arbitrarily. They are fighting for them and their children to have a future. On the Maidan revolution of Ukraine: The Maidan was a revolt against произвол (pronounced: preez-vol), an idea of arbitrariness tinged with tyranny, helplessness in the face of power, the feeling that the powers that be can do whatever they want to you, and you are helpless, that you are being treated as a plaything, as a thing and not as a human being, as an object and not as a subject, and the Maidan became a revolt against произвол, it became an insistence on being treated as a person and not as a thing, as a subject not as an object, and they began to call themselves on the Maidan the revolution of dignity. The Making of Modern Ukraine: Maidan and Self-Understanding, Guest Lecturer: Marci Shore -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg_CLI3xY58&list=PLh9mgdi4rNewfxO7LhBoz_1Mx1MaO6sw_&index=21 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg_CLI3xY58&list=PLh9mgdi4rN... In November 2013 Ukraine was expected to sign a long-anticipated association agreement with the European Union. At the eleventh hour, on 21 November 2013, Yanukovych refused. The disappointment was especially crushing for students, who felt as if their future had vanished; Europe would be closed to them. That evening a thirty-two-year-old Ukrainian journalist from Kabul named Mustafa Nayyem wrote in Russian on his Facebook page: Come on, let’s get serious. Who is ready to go out to the Maidan by midnight tonight? ‘Likes’ don’t count. That night Ukrainians—overwhelming students—came to the Maidan—and stayed. They held hands and shouted, “Ukraine is Europe!” At 4 am on 30 November 2013 Yanukovych sent his riot police to the Maidan to beat the students. The violence against peaceful protestors was a shock. Yanukovych, it seems, was counting on the shock to shake parents into pulling their kids off the streets. That was when something remarkable happened: instead of pulling their kids off the streets, the parents joined them there. It was a historic Aufhebung of Oedipal rebellion. Now there were close to a million people on the streets of Kyiv, and they were shouting, “We will not permit you to beat our children!” Ukraine's Maidan Revolution --https://snyder.substack.com/p/ukraines-maidan-revolution https://snyder.substack.com/p/ukraines-maidan-revolution I showed up to the first protest of my entire life on April 5th. This Saturday, April 19th, everyone here should show up, too. Upvotes don't count.