COMMIE GIRL: HEY, PRO-MUBARAK THUGS! DON’T BE TEA-PARTIERS!
By Rebecca Schoenkopf
Just a few days ago, it seemed like Egypt might throw itself a velvet revolution—a (nearly) blood-free, gore-less transition, where the sad, unloved dictator took a look at all the people who were so very mad and decided maybe now was a good time to get gone.
You know who’s not a Middle East scholar? Me! I am an American, and as such find it wholly unnecessary to know stuff about places that are not here.
(If I happen to know an inordinate amount—again, for an American—about Latin American death squads and John Negroponte in Honduras in the ’80s, it’s more a product of a Slumdog Millionaire-style set of happenstances. I happen to have had a bunch of commie nuns in Catholic school in junior high who showed us Romero, about the leftist archbishop being murdered by Roberto D’Aubuisson, who was US-backed and -trained. And my mom happened to have been big in peace politics in the ’80s, and so we’d have the Christic Institute’s Daniel Sheehan, who represented Karen Silkwood and turned out years later to be kind of a nut, come and talk to the Democratic Club of which mi mamacita was la presidenta about all the evil behind-the-sceneses of St. Ronald Reagan’s Iran-Contra Hijinks. And we happen to have been Liberation Theology-style hippie Catholics, so we knew about the Contra-raped-and-murdered nuns, also too.)
But the Middle East is for serious think-tank types, the neocons and the guys with the evil-looking Van Dykes, to run their game theory and their Realpolitik. And yet! You could be a person whose knowledge of the Middle East is limited to 1) Queen Noor is pretty, and she’s cool! and 2) I’m really glad I don’t live in the Middle East—and you could still have thought this peaceful revolution was a real sweet treat!
The faithful reader will remember that just all of three whole weeks ago I told of explaining to my sweet son why I prefer Martin Luther King to Malcolm X—peace, dear child, and patience—and that it made me feel like a centrist whitey-type person, tut-tutting (oh, see what I did there?!) that everyone must wait, that our side must be morally perfect while their side turns on the hoses and turns out the dogs, that change will surely come, someday, hopefully within the next, say, hundred years.
And now, right now, in Egypt, was proof that the shackles could be thrown off through peaceful, perfect resistance. Thank you, Egypt! GOOD JOB!
So Egypt turned on the hoses, and the people still waited, still morally perfect—and praying, even, as hard and pure as Gandhi or King could ask—and the world saw them, it witnessed them, and was inspired and glad.
Except that a week later, the thugs came out, and not only did they take bricks and bats to the protesters, but they beat up Anderson Cooper, and they mobbed Christiane Amanpour, and Katie Couric looked like she was freaked the fuck out, and stop beating up the journalists! It isn’t at all the cool thing to do! Don’t be fucking Tea Partiers, pro-Mubarak thugs!
The Forces of Gross may still win this—may have even won by the time you read me. They faced an awful lot of dogs and hoses in Selma too. But they overcame, just like they promised. And they were perfect on the way.
FOR MORE COMMIE GIRL—AND JIM WASHBURN, TOO—GO TO FOURSTORY.ORG
10 Comments
Rebecca, you may want to review your assumptions as to how and where this (most recent) violence in Egypt originated and exactly who was committing it. The violence did not, as you so artfully imply, originate from among representatives of the government (police and military.)
The “thugs” that came out were among the protesters themselves as well as opportunists who saw the sudden *absence* of the police and the notable *detachment* of the military as a chance to loot the property of others and to commit terrible acts of violence against anyone who dared try to resist them.
Evoking names and images such as “Selma” and “dogs and hoses” in the context of the violence that is going on in Egypt right now is simply misdirective and entirely inaccurate.
To attempt to equate the violence that is going on in Egypt right now with the Tea Party movement here in the U.S. is just foolish and sadly opportunistic in its own way.
Rebecca, since your moniker identifies you to a time of an idealogical and economic division and battle in the world that no longer exists, are you familiar with or have any ideas on Sam Huntington’s hypothesis of the world order remaking around seven civilizations: the West, Sinic, Orthodox, Hindu, Islam, Latin American & Japanese?
Or, since southern Sudan, which is majority Christian, just voted to form their own country and has the support of Obama, what do you think of it?
“Evoking names and images such as “Selma” and “dogs and hoses” in the context of the violence that is going on in Egypt right now is simply misdirective and entirely inaccurate.”
Not really, John. The ironic parallel is pretty accurate, in that the egyptians are rallying against a political red herring the way MLK rallied against a minority of rednecks with fire hoses, and the outcome will be about the same; it will take a few generations for the egyptians to realize the enemy, that is, those who are “keeping them down,” are themselves.
I’m fairly certain commie girl didn’t intend for that parallel to be present in her “essay,” but it’s there all the same.
If we stopped sending that annual $1.3 billion to Egypt, they would all be at each other’s throats a year later, and would curse the day they threw out their “dictator.”
They are an artificially propped up “civilization,” that cannot stand without American cash. As we continue to ignore population growth, and continue to prop up unsustainable cultures, we will see more and more angry brown people taking to the streets. Get used to it.
The paradox in our world is the more developed areas reprodouce at a slower rate even though they can sustain more, and the less developed reproduce faster. And, an overlord plays this to keep control. Next.
“The paradox in our world is the more developed areas reprodouce at a slower rate even though they can sustain more, and the less developed reproduce faster. And, an overlord plays this to keep control. Next.”
The same mentality that created the credit crisis is in play on an international level. That is, people without the power to produce are given money to appear as if they are productive, so they may live as if they are productive, when in fact, they are not.
The popular conception, thanks to our sainted dumb bitch, Margaret Mead, is that all cultures are peers of one another, and if one of them cannot keep up economically, they must be subsidized. Doing this allows these cultures to keep the same economically unviable world view as their grandfathers, without the pain and suffering that would usually accompany such views. Views such as not allowing women to drive cars, keeping their faces hidden, making them sit in a back room at the local Starbucks.
For example, no country that I’m aware of, has ever prospered in the long term via the subjugation of women. Not without plundering neighboring countries at set intervals. It’s always a shaky economy at best. You can’t cut out that much of the productive population and remain sustainable. We learned that the hard way. We expect other countries to learn that in the abstract, while giving them a yearly allowance to keep them from killing each other. One big reason Haiti is and always will fail, is they subjugate women. Same with the ottoman empire. Same in most of Africa.
In any case, this is why “rooting” for either side of this conflict is a fool’s errand. It’s like rooting for Hitler’s SA, instead of the SS. They’re all assholes. You don’t gain points for picking the lesser of the qualified assholes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muvYNVQCRxQ
Jeanine, how about something a bit less hysterical: http://www.youtube.com.watch?v=wBfKXHoSvDM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBfKXHoSvDM&feature=related
Transitioning in days of more&less: http://www.cnbc.com/id/41491498
The revolution will soon be hitting the streets of America. Who is John Galt?