{"id":7526,"date":"2011-01-31T17:32:18","date_gmt":"2011-01-31T22:32:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=7526"},"modified":"2020-07-06T10:50:59","modified_gmt":"2020-07-06T14:50:59","slug":"qotd-a-hopeful-view-of-egypts-way-forward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/01\/31\/qotd-a-hopeful-view-of-egypts-way-forward\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: A hopeful view of Egypt’s way forward"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The Old Media — not to mention Hillary Clinton’s comic relief State Department — apparently don’t have a clue what’s really going on. Conservative talk radio already assumes that the whole thing has been orchestrated by militant “Islamists”, in particular, the 80-year-old Muslim Brotherhood. Whenever you see that word, mentally remove the first R to get a clearer picture if what they’re really up to.<\/p>\n

The Botherhood of Man is gonna gitcha if you don’t look out.<\/p>\n

But I digress. <\/p>\n

America’s home grown would-be dictators clearly believe “It can’t happen here”, as demonstrated by their reactions — dazed at first, then hysterical — to the far gentler rise of the Tea Parties and the results of the 2010 election, which they are trying to believe never happened. They’ve spent all of their time since, not changing so that they won’t be despised any more, but trying to shut their critics up by destroying talk radio and requiring individuals to have Internet permits.<\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/p>\n

Out of sheer habit, if nothing else, it is very difficult not make the same mistake as the pundits and politicians. As Robert A. Heinlein observed, every revolution is a freak. By definition there can be no rules to govern or even understand them, and we must avoid thinking collectively about them. There are as many reasons to rebel as there are rebels, and that’s the only important truth we’ll ever glean from them.<\/p>\n

It’s also very difficult to say from what we know now, and I could easily be wrong (I have been before), but it seems to me that this is not a fundamentalist uprising like we saw in Iran a generation ago — although the fundamentalists are desperately trying to coopt it — but an essentially secular revolt by the productive class against both fundamentalism and the fascist management states that dominate the region. <\/p>\n

L. Neil Smith, “Egyptian Tea Party”, Libertarian Enterprise<\/em><\/a>, 2011-01-30<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Old Media — not to mention Hillary Clinton’s comic relief State Department — apparently don’t have a clue what’s really going on. Conservative talk radio already assumes that the whole thing has been orchestrated by militant “Islamists”, in particular, the 80-year-old Muslim Brotherhood. Whenever you see that word, mentally remove the first R to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,370,41],"tags":[588,670,1382,506,478,327],"class_list":["post-7526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","category-middle-east","category-quotations","tag-egypt","tag-hillaryclinton","tag-lneilsmith","tag-revolution","tag-robertheinlein","tag-teaparty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-1Xo","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7526"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58503,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7526\/revisions\/58503"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}