Pyramid Schemes

I guess I have been waiting for something to say about Egypt before saying anything about Egypt. I still don't have much. I started to write about one of the Times' medicore editorials over the weekend, but this sort of writing gets boring. I did, however, come up with the following phrase that I invite anyone to use in their next post: Typical Tedious Times Turgidty.

I think what gets me about the Times is the "timbre" of the authorial voice of the Opinion pages. I can't stand the pompous pragmatism, the voice of "reason" that is always strives to undermine "extremity" towards maintaining the status quo, even when the status quo is more extreme than that which is being counseled against. I shudder to think (good band) of what reading the Times would have been like during the late 1950s and early 1960s in this country. Did they have the same "don't ask for too much too quickly" attitude? Were they "counseling" Dr. King to "be reasonable"? Did they get angry at black people for getting in the way of the fire hoses?

If you are a human being and have even a most basic understanding of what it is to be alive, what is good about it, what is bad about it, then, even if it can never be articulated, something like a universal morality has to become apparent, one that exists on a more fundamental level than any set of beliefs formed by culture, religion, etc. Certainly, slavery and then Jim Crow laws violated that morality, and, in its own way, Mubarak's regime has done the same. So, whatever the writers at the Times believe they are doing, whatever the equivocating hypocrites at the top of our regime here in the USA think they are talking about, in reality, by not embracing change wholeheartedly, they are, regardless of their goals, defending a corrupt regime and slowing down its inevitable and necessary replacement.

If this, the most legitimate form of "regime change" the Arab world has seen, outside of Tunisia, in a long time, continues to be held back, the damage will grow worse than what it would have been had Mubarak decided to flee six days ago. Whoever takes over will find their economy in a deep, deep hole, as capitalists pull the money out of a country that could, ultimately, just as easily become a stable, Western-style democracy as anything else. That is, if they are allowed to become one. But a lack of support, both from Western leaders but also, sorry, from capitalists, could lead Egypt down other, mostly less promising, roads.

Of course, I don't really care if Egypt's new government serves the best interests of the West. I don't care if they become a healthy import market for goods or if they continue to assist in the violent war on violence. It's up to them what country to become (and, if Communist utopia is the answer, I will honestly come help build). But it still infuriates me, even with my mixed feelings and/or hatred towards these things, that Egypt might be prevented from becoming the pro-Western, Israel-loving, Empire-joining, terror-war-waging country it could become just because of the incomptent self interest of Western governments, corporations, and the Israel lobby. And it will infuriate me even more if, should Egypt become something else, something truly anathema to the power elite but also to the possibility of peace and justice (the good kind that isn't sponsored by a soft drink), that same power elite were to wash its hands of the whole affair and blame Egyptians for the mess.