The Earth Shifts (James Howard Kunstler)

[Tace]

James Howard Kunstler -- World News Trust

Jan. 31, 2011 -- Those Panglossians around the USA awaiting something like an election in Egypt are going to be disappointed.

What's going on in the streets of Cairo right now is an Egyptian election -- minus the American-style trappings of corporate grift, scripted "debates," and polling places that make our elections so satisfying.

Many here in the dreamland of Happy Motoring and Cheez Wiz are asking themselves why President Obama is waffling about the obvious tides of "change" now lapping over the ancient Kingdom on the Nile. How can he not believe in it? Why isn't Mr. O out there in front with a bloody bandage around his head, cheerleading for the street fighters? If you lay aside the subtleties, the answer is simple: nothing beyond the status quo of recent years is good news for America.

For one thing, only people paid to flap their gums on Larry Kudlow's nightly CNBC show, and children under nine years old, believe that anything like "democracy and freedom" will arise out of a street revolt in this region of the world. Sure, the opening acts of an historic event like this bring on mass intoxication that the Shining City or the Kingdom of Heaven or some other ideal disposition of things is at hand. There may even be an intermezzo of civil factional interplay, as we saw in Iran thirty years ago, with figures like Shapour Bakhtiar, Mehdi Bazargan, and Abolhassan Banisadr revolving through the turnstile of politics. It doesn't take long for the turnstile to turn into a meat grinder, and it doesn't take much vision to see all the things that can go wrong when that happens in that part of the world.

Before I go any further, I don't want to be misunderstood by eager misunderstanders. In my view, President Mubarak has about as much chance of sticking around his presidential palace another fortnight as a bluebottle fly has of conducting the next Easter mass at the Vatican. Mubarak's resistance to that message prompts one to wonder: what is it with these old despots that they can't manage some sort of orderly timely transition -- even if they handpick the successor dude? There must be a few capable younger replacement despots in a country that large (around 80 million). Why does it always have to come to this?

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[Demeter]

1. Give the Egyptians some credit

They are probably the most educated and Westernized of the Middle Eastern peoples. Their intelligensia and professionals didn't get to emigrate. They don't put their women in purdah. The entire population, including the army, is united in turning out the Mubarak regime in its entirety.

And they are sick of strong men. they COULD create a real government of, by and for the People.

[bemildred]

2. Yes, "time is a tailor specializing in alterations".

You want to know how it comes out, you have to watch and see.