"A large portion of Egyptians are dissatisfied with their lot in life. What they are crying and bleeding for in the streets of Cairo (just as they did in the streets of Tehran, Beirut, and Damascus) is that they at least want to have the opportunity to choose which demented douche bag inflicts their misery upon them, whether despotic secular or despotic clerical, or a combination of both. This is not, strictly speaking, democracy....." Lunatic's Asylum
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That graphic is so true, and so very appropriate.
ReplyDeletePost is so true. The media is trying to sell this as a movement that will lead to some kind of world class Democracy. As you said they have no idea of what that means or what it takes to develop it. They are just fooling the fools.
ReplyDeleteBy the time the next scheduled elections roll around in September, all the young people involved in fomenting the revolution to overthrow Mubarak will have been left behind in the shadows. That's just the reality of a spontaneous movement with no structure and no leadership.
ReplyDeleteThe question then becomes one of who or what group will step forward to fill the void in governance. As DS suggests, there is no history of democratic institutions in Egypt. There are no secular political leaders standing in the wings to emerge as viable political candidates. There are no organized political parties, save the Muslim Brotherhood, to immediately step up to the challenge of creating a new system of governance.
I am not suggesting that some form of theocratic Islamist government is an inevitability. I am suggesting that unless some popular secular Egyptian leaders rise to the challenge of engaging the people with specific plans for a secular democratic form of government, it will then inevitably allow the MB to carve out a permanent niche in Egyptian governance, thus pushing Egypt toward a despotic theocratic thugery similar, but not necessarily the same as, to what has arisen in Iran.