The Party will be short-lived In Egypt
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011/02/military...
Most of these people don't even know what they are celebrating for or really care or understand what they are getting in return. In time, the predictable, corrupt process will pit opposition factions against each other as they scramble and jockey to secure power on the backs of the rubes who just helped them create enough hysteria to get Mubarak down.
One mob boss just whacked another. Hardly a cause for real celebration for the common man...as they will undoubtedly soon find out. Poor things....
I see a possessed Frodo and Gollum fighting for the ring in front of the fires inside Mt. Doom. No hero to be found here.
"WE WON" "YEAH". That's what you'll hear from the commoner in those rejoicing crowds getting swept up in the moment.
Their new overlords are preparing the next chapter of their misery as we speak.
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Comments :
So
Revolution is pointless? People should just accept the lousy, hateful, totalitarian status quo for fear of something worse?
Fie on your pessimism! ;-)
Populist revolutions are pointless
because there's nothing positive that drives them toward a better conclusion. It's simply naive enabling of one group to overthrow another. The commoner will still be left out and just go back to his misery.
The act of rebellion isn't the problem. It's the populist guise of it all in which one oppressor rallies the rubes to get rid of another through shaky alliances that will disintegrate one power is solidified again.
It's one chancellor Palpatine rallying support to replace another. Power to the people?? Whatever.
I'd have more optimism for those poor folks if they had simply blown up the government and disbanded the military.
Chin up!
".....because there's nothing positive that drives them toward a better conclusion."
But we don't really know that this is the case here, do we? I don't read Arabic, and have little direct knowledge of Egyptian politics, so I have no idea what type of grassroots organizations already exist. Do you? I'm certain our media does not, and from how Panetta's statement to Congress
was spun, it appears that the FBI gets its insider information from Wolf Blitzer.
Sure this is a shaky time. Lots of things can go wrong. Lots of things probably will go wrong. Moving from where they are now to where they want to be is going to take work. But I don't think that any of us on this side of the Atlantic, talking heads included, have a clue as to what's really going on over there. I've been glued to as much media as I can get here, and from the comments of real Egyptians (not just so-called American "experts") I'm judging them as knowing exactly what they were taking on when they started this. Do they have the people to finish it? I have no idea. The Army is going to be conflicted, and how they resolve their internal issues of power versus patriotism will determine much, I'm guessing.
Just curious....are you old enough to remember the fall of the USSR? That too was a behemoth that conventional wisdom said would never fall.
Linking to Redstate because it was the first Google hit, and because it fits the theme of the day ;-)
When you consider the way people act here
around election time and all the wild-eyed talk of "Hope", "Salvation" and "Yes WE CAN!", I'd say it's the same thing only worse.
Public Choice Theory is too compelling to give weight to the idea of some shining exception...especially in a place like Egypt.
BTW, to your last question:
Yes, I'm 38. I remember the fall of communism. But that's altogether different in so many ways. I personally never thought it wouldn't fall but having something ridiculous like communism crush under its own weight is simply not something I view as similar to what is going on in Egypt. What is going on in Egypt is more like something we saw in Cuba or the other political fights elsewhere in Latin America over the years.
Oh, agreed
I was just curious. And 38 makes you probably still a child when it happened, yes? I have ten years on you and I was merely a young adult at the time. But I remember well the intellectual environment of the communist era.
The only real parallel I was trying to draw is that regimes that appear solid can and have changed fairly rapidly, and not all such changes have been superficial changes.
Was the American Revolution ...
a "populist revolution" by your definition? :)
(Not that I am comparing what is happening in Egypt to the American Revolution. I am just chalenging your blanket "populist revolutions are pointless" comment.)
I'm the Bugs Bunny of Swords Crossed!
-4 Strongly Disagree - 0 Meh - Strongly Agree +4I hope it's not
but I am afraid that it will be. We'll see soon enough. The mobs in such corrupt and economically depressed societies rarely produce good results.
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
Yes.
...
Well said. n/t
n/t