Civil unrest around the world

[BigV]

Originally Posted by sexobon

Americans think of lasting change as happening in 4 to 8 year iterations in consonance with our Presidential election cycle and term limitation. For others, lasting change may happen only over generations. Trying to segregate religion from their governments on our timetable may shock their core belief systems resulting in our ideology being summarily rejected. Change to that extent has to come from within; unless, we subjugate them for generations. They're not stupid, they already understand the underlying principles of our system. They also know that our system is only a 237 y.o. work in progress that still leaves a lot to be desired. Recognizing this is the situation, we choose to give them a taste of democracy by advocating free elections without making our support contingent upon the separation of church and state. Even if the resulting governments fail, the general population is learning more about the value of the right to self determination with each attempt. They'll get to a viable structure of government in their own time, despite setbacks, and maybe even come up with something better than ours! Unless of course you think we should just conquer them now.

this is not quite HoF material, but it is absolutely right on target on the facts.

Going from where they were, Mubarak, to where they had their eyes on, Obama, was just too far, too fast. It was an impossible leap. It's a great instinct, and a thousand miles/single step, yada yada, sure, sure. It has to start somehow. This is a start. But just because they didn't achieve political nirvana on this, the first try, doesn't mean they're doomed.

It reminds me of when I was first married, my wife's parents were very kind to us, enjoyed having us around. We spent time with them, and much of that time was on their dime, dinners out, etc. I enjoyed all of it, but I felt a need to reciprocate. Even worse, I felt as though I should live my life, no, our life as my in-laws did. But it was impossible to eat out like they did, or enjoy leisure activities like they did, or consume and decorate and accessorize our life like they did. NOT that we didn't try! We were following the model we had in front of us, our (her) parents. THAT effort, at that time, *was* doomed. We didn't have anything like the economic resources to live like that.

But we tried. And it bankrupted us. We spend so far beyond our means that the economic damage (and social/relational damage) lasted for years. It was a contributing factor in our divorce. I paid on credit card debt for years and years after the expense of the original consumption. We wanted to live like that, we tried, but we couldn't, not then, not under our own steam.

I can live like that NOW, but only after lots of other things happened, chiefly among them, the passage of time. And hard work during that time, making mistakes, more, new mistakes, repeating some of the mistakes having not learned the lesson from them the first time, more hard work, etc.

What's happening in Egypt strikes me as a similar situation, they want shiny, representative democracy, but they don't have anything like the prerequisites. Well, they have some. They have the most important one, the desire to change and action toward that change. That's necessary but not sufficient. They have a model (lots of models) but none that match the historical context comparing America's revolution to Egypt's revolution. Their world's a lot different. And other crucial aspects of their starting point are different. I don't even know what kind of democracy they want, I've kind of thought about them moving toward a system like our own, but that's just my own cultural bias talking.

sexobon correctly points out that this is change that proceeds at generational pace. Stay tuned. It took a generation for me to achieve my goals, Egypt's trying something much bigger and harder and it can't happen faster.