(apologies for the poor recording quality, i couldn't find this on youtube and i'm not quite geeky enough to know how to record it better. also, i realized after i wrote this that the big vote has already been cast and tabulated. but only 40something percent voted? will it be a tyranny of the majority again, after all that uprising?)
On my way home today I cycled past a church with a billboard outside that said “How would you feel if you learned you’d been wrong forever?” or words to that effect.
I’ll let you guess what went through my little atheistic brain.
Then I got home and listened to part of a discussion on Al Jazeera about the new Egyptian constitution. My first reaction was to wonder why they don’t have a new constitution written yet, they seemed so united a few weeks ago when they were out in the streets demanding an end to autocracy, some of them being killed for their efforts. After listening for a few minutes, contributing my own unheard thoughts between mouthfuls of spaghetti and squash and tofu-tomato sauce, I remembered back to the first gulf war when I sat through hours of debate with other peace activists as we tried to decide on a central statement of understanding. Hours! I don’t even remember if we ever ultimately agreed, but we were all there at the next rally, calling for an end to war. Of course, my Egyptian friends, it’ll take a while. Democracy is a messy and time consuming project.
And maybe that’s a good thing. The best way to wreck a democracy is to leave it all up to enshrined political parties vying for power. It’s no fun watching your friends become unrecognizable as they obsessively focus on the competition needed to win the party leadership, then the election, forgetting why they cared about it all in the first place. A paycheque is a paycheque, and it’s amazing what people will do to earn one. Politicians focus a significant amount of their grey matter on the next election, wondering who the masses are, and what they’ll vote for, so they can pretend that’s what they care about too, and continue to receive their paycheques, feed their families, pay their bills, and ultimately receive their old age pensions.
What a different world it would be if we could remove the profit motive.
Right now in Egypt, from what I discerned from this particular discussion, the main bone of constitutional contention is about deciding whether to include “Egypt is a Muslim country” or words to that effect. Of course the Muslim brotherhood are all for it. Hey, it seems to work for the Jews next door in Israel, no controversy there at all. Why not enshrine the ancient familial misunderstandings in the constitution. Divide and conquer, it works every time - as long as the majority is on your team. Screw the minority. That’s just how “democracy” works.
I figure the longer the Egyptian people talk and debate and discuss, the better off they’ll be. If I were Egyptian, with nothing but time on my hands, I might download constitutions from countries that aren’t completely bankrupt, economically and otherwise, countries like Cuba and Bolivia and Holland and Sweden, and extract the good bits and put something together and submit it. There is a submission process in Egypt, right? Or would that be too democratic?
The key, it seems to me, is to determine who wants democracy, and who wants power.
The longer the Egyptian people talk and debate and discuss, the longer they’ll keep the power from concentrating. The country isn’t falling apart, is it? The necessary work’s getting done, the people are fed and housed … aren’t they? The only reason “Egypt” needs a constitution is so that the rest of the world will recognize them as a legitimate nation. That’s important, you don’t want “instability” because there are lots of paid military personnel willing to follow orders to move on in and “stabilize” everything for you.
My advice, absolutely and entirely founded in nothing but dreams and wild imaginings about what a perfect world would look like, is to just keep on talking, my Egyptian sisters and brothers. If we’re lucky, soon the Bahrainis, and the Libyans and the Yemenis and the Palestinians and maybe even the Canadians will win their battles, dismantle their hierarchies, and join you in the discussion. We’ll all just keep on talking about democracy, all the while actually DOING it, and maybe one day we can write about what we’ve done, seal it in a document and legitimize it.
What a world that would be!
