When they finally got sick of it and announced that they were going to come back tomorrow and do an armed march, the cops suddenly remembered that they all had dentist appointments in Belarus that day and skipped town.

Sure, but that was in lily-white Ukraine where the people doing the protests were aligned with Western European geopolitical interests and looking to overthrow an ally of the Putin Regime. So, of course the history we write about it is going to valorize the Ukrainians and paint the effort as trivial and the opposition as spineless.

What happened when Iraqis started showing up in armed protests outside of the US-occupied Green Zone? Or the Yemini Houthis began arming protesters against the Saudi-allied national government? Or the West Bank protesters began throwing rocks at Israeli tanks? Or the Ferguson BLM protesters or Hong Kong democracy protesters or Syrian Green Revolution protesters started showing up to tussle with police?

Hell, even taken in the best possible light, the Maidan revolution ended in... what? A country split in half by a Russian military occupation.

This isn't to detract from the virtues of armed resistance. But people love to harp on the eventual, occasional victories and hate to reminisce on the far more prolific depressing failures. It's easy to talk about Vietnamese insurgents triumphing in 1974 when you forget the revolution kicked off in earnest in 1940.

"Just show up with guns and the police will crawl away on their bellies and you'll win" is as painfully naive as the "Just show up with flowers and the police will put down their riot gear and greet you with hugs and songs".

Nothing about this is easy or guaranteed. Nobody is getting to the end of this without shedding blood. If you show up with a weapon to a protest, you better be prepared to have weapons used on you in turn. Don't go in thinking you can bluff your way to a glorious revolution.