If you are one of my super excited, optimistic, youthful, college-educated, naive friends who is excited about the developments in Egypt because you like sticking it to to the man and love popular revolutions because they are en vogue like moving to the Bay Area and wearing Peruvian Alpaca hats... grow up. Drink a nice tall glass of pragmatism and listen closely: Egypt is descending into chaos and you are cheering it on. Watch the following clip for illustration:
What's the moral of this short vid?
Phase 2: ?
Understand? I'll spell it out just in case. These revolutionaries have no Plan B. They have an award-winning physicist offering to lead a transitional government, and while I think physicists should have far more influence in the affairs of man than, say, lawyers, it defies logic to believe that a man supported by a small minority of the nation whose political experience is limited to begging people not to build nukes is going to gloriously unite a country that is in civil war.
What is your Phase 2? Phase 1 is overthrowing your current government and allowing no transition period. OK, fine. Phase 3 is living in harmony with all of God's creatures in an Arab Utopia or whatever. Cool. That's everyone's Phase 3. What the hell is your Phase 2? Do you expect things to just work themselves out like the autocorrect on your latest English paper? Phase 2 is anarchy, because there is no plan to transition from what you have to what you want.
Radical Islam feeds off anarchy.
Again... Radical Islam LOVES anarchy.
Do you think the ensuing power vacuum will be filled by idealistic graduate students who practice civil disobedience to effect popular change? Doesn't it seem more likely that an international interest with access to all kinds of money and religious figures will swoop in to "restore order" and, oh, by the way, Sharia Law also? I'm not even talking about the Muslim Brotherhood. That group is just a bunch of grumpy old men like me trying to make things the way they used to be. We're looking at an Egyptian Taliban, or yet another religious dictatorship like Iran seizing the reins of Egypt's government and establishing another Anti-US, Anti-Israel force in the Middle East. Chalk one up for Al Qaeda, whose goal is to reestablish the "good ol' days" of the 12th century Caliphate.
I really hope I'm wrong.
That's enough ranting for now.
One more thing: "seize the reins" has two violations of the "I before E except after C" rule. What a terrible phrase.
