BEFORE ANYBODY OUTSIDE CHINA HEARD ABOUT THE LUNG ROT.

There's a whole new set of reasons to push back against overweening governments.

Lately there seem to be an unusually large number of mass resistance movements unfolding in countries all over the world. Here in the U.S., Puerto Rico’s recent political turmoil upended the entire local government structure. In Latin America, there have been upheavals over the past few weeks in Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and Chile. In the Caribbean, Haiti is experiencing its worst political turmoil since the 2004 ouster of President Jean Bertrand Aristide. On the other side of the planet, Arab nations like Iraq and Lebanon have erupted into mass upheavals. Sudan just a few months ago toppled dictator Omar al-Bashir and now wants his party disbanded. And in Hong Kong, months of mass sustained protests have brought the nation to a standstill. What is happening?

There are common themes running throughout this widespread global uprising. The unrest is marked by a deep dissatisfaction with an economic order that benefits elites over others, combined with outrage against authoritarianism and the use of force to quell dissent. Often these are intertwined, as regimes use force to maintain the unequal economic order and demand public subservience and obedience. Then, a new proposed rule or law— seemingly innocuous at first—lights the spark of protest over long-simmering issues. In the internet age, activists organize with greater ease than before and are highly educated about their plight, giving them a greater ability to document and share abuses far and wide.

Hong Kong is not a nation, it is under Communist Chinese management, and the Wuhan coronavirus has given the mandarins in Pekin license to crack down on the protest. Now, petty tyrants in Democrat run states or European countries are using the virus as an excuse to suppress civil liberties, and the people who run social media platforms are doing everything they can to limit the sharing of information.  If you're Sonali Kolhatkar, are you so much a vulgar Marxist that you don't see the reversion to feudalism, with the politicians and the high tech barons making common cause against the yeomanry?

The commonalities of why there are so many movements in disparate parts of the world are quite striking. Free-market capitalism has proved time and again to be a failure. The promised riches are distributed far too unequally, and for most they never transpire. The only way to preserve the current social and economic order is by force. And when people have had enough, they meet force with resistance and resilience. These are lessons not just for ordinary people suffering economic injustices, but for the governments that oversee them.

Perhaps so, and there are a lot of overweening governments to be voted out, or overturned, although not for such hackneyed reasons as the lady offers.