Prerequisite Presuppositions?
Pinwheel said:
What do you suggest, NOT letting Mubarak fail? Actively supporting him against the protesters?
While it's true that the world wonders what will come next, note the inherent bigotry of Mr. Roam's argument. Apparently, Egyptians
can't do any better, since Mubarak must necessarily be replaced by an "Iranian style Dictatorial Theocracy".
It's a curious paradox. The Egyptian protester, then, is saying, "We want freedom! Install a new dictator! We want freedom! Install a new dictator!"
The next dictator won't get thirty years.
David Frum explains:
How do you say "It's the economy, stupid!" in Mandarin? Let's compare Egypt and China: When Hosni Mubarak assumed power in 1981, Egypt's per capita GDP was 250 percent greater than China's. Today, China's is 50 percent greater than Egypt's. Since 1981, the Egyptian economy has grown, and grown faster than its population. That's impressive, because Egypt's population has doubled since 1981, from 40 million to 80 million.
But Egypt's economy has grown nowhere fast enough to satisfy the aspirations of its people. Half the country subsists on less than $2 a day. Upward mobility is blocked. Egypt has the largest population of unemployed college graduates in the Middle East.
China's rapid economic growth and slow population growth has raised incomes so fast that ordinary Chinese people see meaningful improvement in their lives: Better food, better housing, better clothing. Yes, many Chinese obviously remain very poor, but enough Chinese have benefited rapidly enough that they understandably prefer to wait for further betterment rather than do anything that might upset an improving status quo. China's turn toward dynamic capitalism has bestowed legitimacy on its otherwise authoritarian government. Egypt's sluggish state-controlled economy has fomented the discontent now shaking the state's controllers.
It's not the
best argument, since it is derived from a risky proposition about opinion polls in China. And it's amusing in its spoken form because I rarely hear people elide the word "nineteen" (e.g., "nin'een eighty-one"). But it also includes key points about economic discontent.
We see a similar phenomenon in the United States, albeit on a drastically lesser scale. People don't want to rock the boat. And then the economy sours, and they start talking about blood and revolution. Marx learned the same lesson in 1848, when the middle class bolted to the bourgeoisie.
Meanwhile, if the Egyptian revolution goes south after Mubarak's departure, we don't have to be surprised. Nor do we have to say it's because they're Egyptian and only capable of an Iranian Revolution redux.
Matt Frei reminds:
Have you noticed how Egypt's revolution is NOT named after a flower or a tree or a colour? Perhaps that's just as well because such labels don't always bode well. Remember how the euphoria of the Orange Revolution (Ukraine), the Rose Revolution (Georgia), the Cedar Revolution (Lebanon) or indeed the Green Revolution (Iran) ended? In the latter case the baby was strangled at birth. In the other cases the revolutionary ecstasy gave way to the frustration of elected government, deprived of the institutions and laws necessary to make democracies work.
When President Hosni Mubarak leaves, the same fate may await Egypt, with potentially more serious consequences for the region and beyond ....
And those are just the recent ones. Revolutions aren't all they're cracked up to be, and should thus be undertaken cautiously.
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Notes:
Frum, David. "The economics of political unrest". Marketplace. February 2, 2011. Marketplace.PublicRadio.org. February 3, 2011. http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/02/02/pm-frum-the-economics-of-political-unrest/
Frei, Matt. "Has the Middle East caught the freedom bug?" American Frei. February 1, 2011. BBC.co.uk. February 3, 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/mattfrei/2011/02/has_the_middle_east_caught_the.html
