Egypt, From Tennessee

OS has a huge week ahead of him, so will be very sporadic in his ruminations for his legions of readers...

What Egypt looks like from here, through the glimpses seen via Al-Jazeera, CNN, the papers, etc., is:

These kids in the street don't look like Islamic fundies. They look like really frustrated young people with educations, ambitions, and nowhere to use them. All they've known is this old horse's ass in charge their entire lives, propped up by the US, the UK, and Europe, corrupt to the core, with his boot on the neck of the culture.

They also have access to the outside world and one another via satellite TV, internet, mobile devices, Twitter, etc. etc., and they don't for a minute buy the official line from anybody. They know there's a better life out there, and that freedom is the cure to the problem. They just don't know how to get from where they are to where they want to be. But in the meantime, burning down the offices of the official state party looks like a good place to begin.

They hate the United States, the UK, and Europe for propping up the old horse's ass, 'cuz they know that each barrel of oil transiting the Suez Canal means infinitely more to those places that the quality of any normal person's life in Egypt. OS thinks his country has failed the morality test by refusing to develop its own reserves of oil, coal, gas, and nuclear, thus ending the dependence on oil coming through that canal. Our self-righteous insistence on pristine wilderness above the Arctic Circle is paid for by the young unemployed in places like Cairo and Alexandria.

Shame on us. We know better, and refuse to act on what we know. It is unsurprising to see the Stars and Stripes set ablaze in the streets of Cairo.

Upsetting, yes. Surprising, no.

Religious crazies can appeal to such people, by creating a sense of communal persecution, the prospect of participating in the delivery of divine righteous wrath upon the guilty, and offering the hope of some sort of KingdomOfGodOnEarth with which to replace the current situation. Sane people know that these three items are lies by which unhappy people are seduced, but it looks like a lot of these young people have run out of patience, and think the insane people are the ones running the government, especially the 82-year-old horse's ass.

Here's hoping, here's hoping, here's hoping that they will not listen to the siren song of Islamic fundamentalism, and will insist instead on a government that allows them to live their lives, pursue their dreams for themselves and their families, knows how to hand over power peacefully, and otherwise leaves them the hell alone.

Here's hoping, from Tennessee.