In this week's edition of "Name That Dissolved Government," we talk to Ukraine (or the Ukraine if you so please). This newly overthrown country wanted stronger ties to Russia. Only it didn't ask its people first.
Ukraine is now at the bottom of a long list as the most recent country to either have attempted or successfully carried out a coup d'état. I suppose I'm not surprised that there has been another coup. In the decade of the 1990s, there were 28 coup attempts (successful or not). There's been 22 since 2010. I'll concede that some attempts were from the same opposition party in places like Niger and Guinea-Bissau, but 22 in just over three years is whole heck of a lot. And we still have ten months to go in the year. One more thing, Guinea-Bissau attempted three coups in about 376 days from April 2010 to April 2011 -- all of the attempts failed.
The number of coups attempts have gone up and down in past decades. There were 28 attempts in the '90s, 39 and 38 in the '80s and '70s, respectively. But this decade we (Earth) are averaging 0.57 coups every month! So if I do the math, we're on pace for 69.47 coups! I'd say that's pretty good (or bad).
The formula for a coup d'état is pretty uniform and quite simple. It's the buttermilk pancake recipe of the kitchen.
✓ Poor country
✓ Dictatorship / Militarism
✓ Unhappy/Miserable citizens
✓ High unemployment
An interesting point about coups is that they are usually being carried out or attempted by the youth (or yutes) of the country. The median age in Ukraine is 40.3, Libya is 27.1, which seems incredibly wrong, but I trust everything I know to the CIA Factbook. (Admission: for the longest time I thought it was called CIA Facebook.)
Go down the list of coups this decade and the common denominator is youth. Tie social media and the ability to tweet, share pictures, post videos, and do whatever it is you do with Capazoo, and it's an easy way to visualize governmental oppression, corruption, and innocent protesters being shot in the head by snipers. Wagging the dog no longer works when someone can create a historical record of atrocities in the amount of time it takes me to realize that something is going down (and then stand there and think, "Eh, someone will record that.")
Despite the fact that only 30 percent of people in the world have Internet access, there seems to always be someone in the most remote places on earth that is able to tweet, record video, or post something to a wall. So keep on coup-ing world. I know it's partly your generation. The "Fuck you. I don't want to do that" attitude. Which is good. Too much of that can make you puke, though, but just the right amount can apparently overthrow countries. Of course it's more than just your attitude that gets you riled up. It's also your inability to view pornography openly, or be able to love who you want to love (for Christ's sake, can someone get Pussy Riot a record deal already so they stop getting beaten up?).
The corrupt boobs that hold office in all of these countries have one thing in common; they're no longer invincible to being infallible, safe from ruling with an iron fist, or immune to the cries of the common, beaten down, pushed-around, oppressed, tortured, un-nurtured, unappreciated, malnourished man. Or woman.
Okay -- so they have a few things in common.