Does Being a Rubbish President Invalidate Democracy?

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I haven’t smoked enough crack in my life to believe that Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is a force for good in this world. Call me crazy, but I just can’t get down with that whole Jew/gay/woman/Christian/etc-oppressing vibe. Unlike the Brothers, I like the separation of religion and politics… I think that it’s one of the great ideas of Western civilisation. Even so, I felt a bit sorry for Mohamed Morsi last week, as he suddenly discovered, much to his surprise, that he wasn’t only an ex-president, but under arrest. I understand why the army locked him up… it’d be very dangerous to have the rightfully-elected President of Egypt running around, denouncing their coup. Nevertheless, try as I might, I couldn’t think of anything he’d done wrong… other than being a rubbish president, of course. Yet, that isn’t a crime.

There was always something hapless about Morsi. He wasn’t even the Brotherhood’s first choice, but rather a back-up president they wheeled out when their favoured candidate was disqualified from running for election. Once he was in power, he ruled like a back-up president, ham-fisted and stupid, doing all the usual authoritarian things… putting comedians on trial and banging on about ideology when millions of his people had no money, no work, and little food. Morsi didn’t seem to grasp that money matters, and that Egypt gets much of its cash from infidels coming over to lie half-naked on beaches, ride camels, and stare at triangular piles of bricks containing dead people. He was so oblivious… or indifferent… to this fact that, last month, he appointed a member of the political arm of a terrorist group responsible for the murder of 58 tourists in the popular tourist destination of Luxor in 1997 as governor… of Luxor. This was political incompetence as performance art.

It was obvious, then, that neither Morsi nor his advisors in the Brotherhood were very wise. Their goal was to Islamise Egypt, but they were going about it entirely the wrong way. They’d read too much Sayyid Qutb, and not enough Lenin. The Bolsheviks didn’t leap to collectivism overnight; they lied, obfuscated, and advanced gradually. Lenin even allowed limited capitalism for a few years; he knew that if you boil a frog slowly enough, it wouldn’t jump out of the water. The Brothers, they just blundered about, pushing for a massive cultural revolution overnight, but without the requisite willingness to butcher their opponents and terrify the masses into submission. Indeed, it was almost as if… as if they really meant to give this democracy thing a go, as if Morsi really did believe that the most important qualification in a governor was his devotion to God, and, after that, the rest would take care of itself.

Meanwhile, his supporters are justifiably appalled… the Brotherhood won the vote honestly, and, now, men with tanks cancelled the results. Morsi really was a duffer, but so was Jimmy Carter, so was Britain’s Gordon Brown, and they were only ever overthrown at the ballot box. That’s how you do it in a democracy. Of course, the USA under Carter and the UK under Brown weren’t tumbling into the abyss as Egypt is today, so, the comparison’s moot. Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures, but there’s no saying that these particular extraordinary measures will fix Egypt’s problems. The army’s already talking about holding new elections soon, but what if a sadist wins next time instead of an incompetent? On the other hand, what if he’s a raving lunatic? Germany was a democracy, yet, the Nazis came to power.

When I was a student, I’d get angry when I read economists argue that some countries aren’t ready for democracy. They were usually talking about China. The simple fairness of allowing people to choose their own leaders was self-evident to me. Twenty years later, and increasingly uncertain about many things I used to know for sure, I see their point. After all, it’s not as if democracy appeared in Europe overnight. It emerged over a couple of thousand years, mixed up with lots of other good ideas such as freedom of speech, the separation of church and state, the rights of man, etc. Therefore, I wonder if extracting one of these ideas and inserting it suddenly into a radically different context is really all that clever. I mean, Egypt is about 5,000 years old, and until last June the country never had a freely-elected leader. Maybe, it would’ve been good to think and plan a bit first, rather than rush into a vote when the only functioning organisations in the impoverished country were the army and a few groups of radical beardy types.

I’m not going to pretend I have all the answers. Nevertheless, although he was clearly wrong about many things, I still can’t help but feel a bit sorry for Morsi. He played the game, he tried his best; he just wasn’t any good… we’ve all been there. However, very few of us wound up under house arrest as a result.

10 July 2013

Daniel Kalder

RIA-Novosti

http://en.ria.ru/columnists/20130710/182168546/Transmissions-from-a-Lone-Star-Does-Being-a-Rubbish-President.html

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19 May 2012. A Little Something from RTÉ on Maggie Thatcher… and How the Queen Mum Reacted to Her “Reforms”

In this super cartoon by Martin Rowson from Tribune, Gordon Brown‘s attempting to repair a monument to Margaret Thatcher with plaster. The statue is beyond repair, however, and it seems a hopeless task. An inscription on the base of the monument reads “She Vanquished The Miners And Brought Freedom And Prosperity” (oh, the irony!). A dog cocks its leg and urinates on the step, whilst a chav in a hoodie smokes a joint. The meaning seems clear enough… Mrs Thatcher‘s legacy lies in ruins, despite Gordon Brown’s futile attempts to preserve it. It’s the end of Neoliberal “conservative” laissez-faire capitalism as we know it.

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Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

The Gospel according to St Matthew 19.23-24

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A friend sent me a quote from an RTÉ show (no, I ‘m sorry, I don’t have a URL or video link):

According to leaks from the Royal Household Staff, more than once, The Queen and Thatcher had vociferous “discussions” on the PM‘s conservative “reform” policies. Her Majesty… who together with the Queen Mother had political memory and experience reaching back into the 19th Century… sternly argued for strong Trades Unions and social welfare benefits. The Queen Mum especially feared a return to the blight and poverty that these two movements had successfully stemmed. Both queens remembered the poverty of the pre-War time, especially that of the Welsh miners and Scottish urban dwellers. Furthermore, the Queen absolutely felt it was such poverty and exploitation that wrenched Ireland out of the UK and led so many Irish to repudiate the United Kingdom. The secession, in both queens’ opinion, would never have occurred if the necessary political and social reforms had been implemented. But Thatcher’s ideological precursors had scuttled that. And the high price was paid.

If Thatcher’s policies took hold it would be only years, maybe decades, the Queen said, before poverty and unemployment would haunt the land, virulent nationalisms would fester (including in England), and Scotland and Wales, too, would rise against the Union. She was right. Thatcher once howled, “That woman! Thank God, she isn’t allowed the vote. Why, she’d vote Socialist Labour! I just know it! Disgusting!”

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You can have rightwing punks such as Dropout Scott Walker and Miss Maggie… or you can have human beings like the Queen Mum. I’m certain that had he lived on, St Nikolai Aleksandrovich would’ve agreed with Her Highness… NOT Saggy Maggie. After all, he was a ROYAL (and a good example of the breed)… not a grubby counting-house mercantile sort (don’t forget, Saggy Maggie’s father ran a VERY modest grocery shop… it’s the source of her money-grubbing and philistine habits, to be sure). Orthodox people should know that St Aleksei Toth blessed his parishioners to join the Wobblies. So, on two grounds, all decent people should reject the godless nostrums of the Republican Party… firstly, it’s wrong to take bread from the workers and stuff it in the boodle bags of the oligarchs, as the Queen Mum observed. Secondly, it’s right to for working people to band together and fight for their rights, as St Aleksei recognised through his blessing.

God is NOT the Protector and Benefactor of the Wealthy… don’t forget, Our Lord Christ CHOSE to be incarnate in the family of a carpenter… NOT in a lawyer’s family… NOT in a priest’s family… NOT in a landowner’s family… NOT in a merchant’s family… do ponder that. I seem to remember something about a camel and an eye of a needle…

Barbara-Marie Drezhlo

Saturday 19 May 2012

Albany NY