Monday, July 8, 2013

Week of 07/08/2013

Egypt: What Were You Thinking?
– by David Matthews 2

A little word of advice to those that crave or currently hold political power: If you came to power through public unrest over the previous powers-that-be because of… oh, I don’t know, maybe the economy… it would be a good idea to resolve the source of that unrest before you start carrying out your personal wish list.

Seriously, I’ve been looking at what has been going on in Egypt and I have to ask what the hell were the Muslim Brotherhood thinking?  Or were they at all?

First, you just got rid of the previous power because they abused that power frequently and because the economy sucks.  (Just a note: the economy sucks everywhere for anyone who is not part of the “One Percent Club”, except maybe those in Germany, so don’t think it’s unique for your area.)  You’re supposed to bring about change, not the status quo under a different name.  (Just as another note: this is Barack Obama’s problem as well, so, again, don’t think this is unique for your area.)

Second, you got in because of a coalition effort, not because the whole nation suddenly decided to support the Muslim Brotherhood.  The Brotherhood couldn’t even get twenty-five percent of the popular vote on the first round of elections!  The message there is simple: if you can’t get an overwhelming massive majority on the first shot, then you can’t claim to have a “mandate”, either from the masses or from God.  But, again, that message was apparently lost.

Think about it: Mohammed Morsi wasn’t even the Brotherhood’s preferred choice!  He was their hastily-selected backup after their “official” guy was disqualified from running.  That’s like losing Tiger Woods and having Carl the Groundskeeper substitute for him at the Masters golf tournament!

And what does he do when he gets in?  He loads his office up with Brotherhood cronies, he gives himself absolute power, and he persecutes his critics using the same rules that Hosni Mubarak used!  I’m surprised that the masses gave him this long of a time before they hit the streets again.

Come on guys, this is Political Overthrow 101 here… when you remove the power, you don’t replace it with something just as bad if not worse!

Let’s get brutally honest here… the Muslim Brotherhood and Mohammed Morsi did this to themselves.  They had the opportunity to do what was right, and initially with the support of the masses, and they squandered that opportunity just to satisfy their self-righteous ego in the name of religion.

In many ways, they mirrored America’s own GOP.  The GOP rallied in 2010 and 2012 on the call for change and improving the economy, and then when they got in, they screwed over the masses that voted them in and started going down their own personal to-do list in the name of religion.  I’m sometimes surprised why we aren’t in the streets in protest here, except we already tried that with the “Occupy” movement and it got killed by both the Obama Fail Machine and the Fox News-dictated GOP.  Believe me when I say that I worry what will happen next if both of these dominant political parties don’t get their act together at some point soon.  Losing at the ballot box will be the least of their worries at that point.

Keep in mind as well that this supposed “essential ally” of the United States was yet another country written off by the Fox News script.  The god-almighty GOP/Fox News Script dictated that Mubarak was a “friend”, that the protesters and their sponsors in the Arab Spring were “evil”, and that the Egyptians had no “right” to complain about their lot in life.  The GOP/Fox News Script then declared Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood to be the new power, and now that same god-almighty Script is fretting about the change… because Egypt is supposed to be our “essential ally”.

Did it ever occur to anyone besides myself that maybe it’s the god-dammed GOP/Fox News Script that is the real problem here?

Of course, the Egyptians still have a pretty big task ahead of them.  They have to purge the stench of Morsi’s failures, set up a new government, set down new rules, make sure that the next batch of leaders don’t make Morsi’s mistakes, and try to fix the very thing that has now toppled two leaders… namely the economy.  Considering how the economy sucks for everyone that are not part of the “One Percent Club”, that last part is going to be a very daunting task indeed.

And let’s not forget the Muslim Brotherhood!  Now that they lost the power that they pompously believe was handed to them on a silver platter by God, they’ve decided to use their fallback method of violence.  Yeah, because nothing says “cooperation” like good old-fashioned fear and terror.  Just ask Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi how well that worked.  Oh, wait, he’s dead.  Well ask Iraq’s Saddam Hussein… oh, wait, he’s dead too.  Well maybe his two sons will… oh, yeah, that’s right.  Well, hey, there’s always Syria, right?

The only really good thing that we can say about what is going on with Egypt right now is that the masses actually give a care about what is going on there!  They’re not sitting on their duffs waiting for the next season of “American Idol” to start up.  They actually care about what is going on and honestly demand change.  This is a resource that should not be taken for granted.  It should not be dismissed because some dictatorial “Script” calls for it, and certainly not because some self-righteous people can’t tell the difference between public outrage and divine proclamation.  It needs to be tempered and channeled to a goal of a better government.  If not, then I guarantee those masses will be back out in the streets again, looking to replace the next leader that fails to learn the lessons of the immediate past.

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