A piece well-worth reading. We have a big stake in a stable Egypt, given the instability of the region, and Egypt’s ‘liberal’ class of educated folks is thinner on the ground, and not capable of supporting the broader kind of representative government we’d like to see. There’s not enough wealth, education, opportunity and economic and institutional strength in Egypt to support it.
That was the dream. Morsi’s biggest problem never was, and still is not today, the twittering liberals of early Tahrir; western oriented secular liberalism has a long way to go before it can become a significant ideological force among the masses in Egypt. His greatest ideological opponents are cynicism and despair and he is in such deep trouble today because the collapsing economy and the general paralysis make him look like another snake oil salesmen selling a fake route to progress. What if Islamism like Nasser’s nationalism is a failure in Egypt? What then? What next?
The Islamist party hasn’t been capable of addressing these deep-rooted problems, nor leading very competently at all.
Millions of people are out in the streets.
Related On This Site: Nancy Okail At Freedom House: “‘Muslim Rage’ and the Politics of Distraction in Egypt’…From Al Jazeera English: ‘Morsi Wins Egypt’s Presidential Election’…Adam Garfinkle At The American Interest on Egypt: ‘Still More of the Same—and Something New’…are we still on a liberalizing, Westernizing trajectory?, however slow the pace? Adam Garfinkle At The American Interest: ‘What Did The Arab Spring Really Change?’