Saturday, February 12, 2011

A WASTED REVOLUTION, WHAT A BUNCH OF DUPES

Because of who I am, I am very sensitive when it comes to name calling and ethnic slurs. My hackles bristle, wrong metaphor, try “rise”, when somebody starts talking about dumb Polacks, greedy Jews, smelly Pakis, stupid Spics, Greasers and Beaners. There are a lot more, but there is no reason to list them all.
When it comes to ethnic slurs there is one that I do not condemn. That is the universal slight of “stupid” when applied to any country or people that deserve it.
          Egyptians have just earned the Olympic Gold Medal for Stupidity, all 70 million of them. They deserve whatever the future holds for them, for they have surely screwed themselves royally even though most of them do not remember or were alive when King Farouk was sacked in ‘52. They have exhibited ignorance and stupidity. I don’t care what their IQ and SAT scores are, or those other indices of intelligence and knowledge we use to judge others. They are just plain dumb.
          Here they are jubilantly dancing and a’prancing in the streets having forced a doddering 82 year old tyrant Hosni Mubarak from office, leaving in place all those others that enabled him to hold power. A dictator with jet black dyed hair as glossy as Italy’s Berlusconi’s. What a hollow victory, what a wasted effort, what a failed revolution!
          Power was wrested from the hands of a criminal American backed and financed despot after 30 years. After enduring years of repression, torture and corruption, first under Anwar Sadat and then Mubarak, Egyptians took to the streets for three weeks of protest and a relatively peaceful revolution, even though a number of “martyr” deaths and casualties have been reported. What did this ruckus, this wasted effort, these sacrifices achieve?
Well, let me tell you, nothing, nada. Power first shifted from President Mubarak to Vice President Omar Suleiman. By the way, there was no Vice President for 30 years. An office recently created for a man who was the Chief of Mubarak’s General Intelligence Directorate to try to help Mubarak retain power. “Intelligence” in like the guy that ran the secret jails and helped us commit rendition crimes of torture. Change what change? Now the power has been vested in the “High Council of the Armed Forces” lead by Mubarak’s Defense Minister Mohamed Tantawi. Democracy what democracy? No, the road to another repressive regime.
As the French are wont to say “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”. Or in this case the Egyptians, just when I thought they couldn’t be any dumber, they go and do something like this, to paraphrase Dum & Dumber, the movie, remember? Throwing out one dictatorship in exchange for another.        

2 comments:

  1. Well, your post is interesting. Got the link from HP.

    But essentially, you are saying everyone is stupid but you. Strange, I feel the same way - you and everyone ELSE are stupid.

    Sam Donaldson, of all people, once said that everything we say can be boiled down to one thing -- Why you should be more like me.

    Reduce that further, and what you, and everyone, is really saying, is "I am smart - you arent".

    Human nature.

    So when you tell me how stupid Egyptians are, what you are really trying to convey, (and you know this) is how smart you are.

    I don't believe it. If you were smart, you would know that OF COURSE Egypt would celebrate getting rid of Mubarak. They had been protesting for weeks, and before that, talking about it for years.

    Do you seriously think once they got rid of him, they were going to take a moment of silence, agree that complaining is easy, but resolving conflicts of competing needs and powers, is exceedingly hard?

    No.

    This is how revolutions go. Study a few. Revolutions are famous for it -- they get rid of one tyrant, and another takes his place. The people you thought were so darned wonderful and caring -- are power hungry selfish bastarks after all.

    All men would be tyrants -- if they could. The wisdom of America came in it's freedom of speech. It was freedom of speech that got rid of slavery. It was freedom of speech that the South violently suppressed from 1820 on, or else slavery could have ended there too.

    The system matters. A system of effective checks and balances. A system of DIStrust, is ironically, necessary. A system that exposes and challenges the inherent tendency of man to abuse, deceive, and inflict pain.

    So if you were really smart, like you want to pretend to be, you would have mentioned that, and hoped, or offered suggestions, for them to achieve such a thing.

    Instead, you just told us how stupid they were, hoping we would think you were one smart duck.

    You ain't smart.

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  2. MindyC on Feb 13, 2011 at 10:55:27
    “While this may be correct - and it is easy to cynically agree with this - you have to remember that change comes very slowly. This revolution may have done nothing more than show the world that peaceful demand for change can have a powerful impact. What happens next may not matter as much as the fact that they ousted Mubarak. REAL change comes at a very slow pace, in tiny increments­. Even if Mubarak's regime gives way to a new less-than-­ideal situation, the Egyptians won because they were heard. And for decades, that had not been the case. If they were heard this time, they will be heard again. And again and again, until they get it right.”
    Share it Permalink dragonlady620 on Feb 13, 2011 at 10:27:01
    “I can't help but think about Nixon and Watergate. We were elated that justice was done and that the lying crooks in our government were exposed. All that happened that those elements made a strategic retreat and then returned with an entrenched position by controllin­g the media. It seems to be the only lesson they learned from Watergate.”

    ReplyDelete