The Amazing Egyptian Revolution, Morning, 11 Feb. 2011, 'Day of Farewell'
What Mubarak's spoken and televised refusal to 'go away' discloses is the complete contempt in which he and this regime holds the ordinary people of Egypt. His patronising paternalism appears something from a distant past, an out of touch aristocracy referring to imaginary stupid, innocent, and brutal peasants. They simply are unable to credit the people with this amazing, beautiful revolution, made in Egypt, carried out by its people, so they must pretend to themselves that they control it secretly and will guide it and channel it to where they want it to go. All the while they plot and conspire to stifle it, in the manner of 'they know not what they do' and 'it has gone far enough'. We have seen debt bubbles lately, but this is a clear example of a culture bubble, in which the regime exists and half-believes its own propaganda. The actions of the media TV station are slowly showing genuine images of the revolution and Tahreer Square, the same as aljazeera, but only the joyful crowds before, not the disgusted and despising aftermath, to his speech, which was explosive.
Some in the western bourgeois press have dared to label this rhetorical piece of verbal ordure 'defiant', but that is the nicest interpretation one could possibly imagine, and one has to imagine very hard. Such a 'defiance' could be seen as brave in the circumstances, but this was no such thing. It was merely ridiculous and as one retired army colonel said accurately, showed madness at work at the 'top' of Egyptian society. I believe that now the real government of Egypt is in fact in Tahreer Sq, Cairo, and lies with its peoples committees (but maybe they don't know it yet themselves), while this festering blob of regime madness, on the other hand, is now a kind of illness, supported by a few guns, a few thugs, and mere inertia.
The military seems to have stated that they will stay out of it, but the people do not trust them wholly, for good reason, and are now angry with them too. Mubarak and Suleiman's, intransigence reveals a complete lack of care about Egypt, it seems they would rather it was destroyed than lose grip. But Egypt is its people, nothing more or less than that, and an Egypt without its people is impossible, it would be redundant. The regime still tries desperately to play on fears of foreign interference, and threatens the pro democracy revolutionaries, when they are in fact the foreign interference, or its leftovers.
The regime must go, the people will stay, and the army must stay as it has been, or it must at least facilitate the will of the citizens, as it seems to have said it will. The alternative is a terrible scenario, but still, in my view, one in which the people prevail, because they are millions. In effect, the people have won, and the revolution is successful, but the reality has to catch up with its future. The Wily Coyote can, in cartoon land, after running off the cliff in pursuit of the Roadrunner, walk back to land if he believes in it (and if they draw it that way - but it would spoil the joke), but in reality this is not possible. Pres. Obama was right in this sense, there is no going back. Things have changed forever, but one wonders about the repeated phraseology of 'orderly transition' and the fact that this is still asking the regime to do things. Presumably they can see that any 'orderly transition' would be one friendly to the regime because it would be channelled by the regime, and they know this is unacceptable to the people, they are not unaware of the threatened death and torture. So why persist with it? It is obvious that there must be at least a 'disorderly transition' or rather a 'disorderly transformation', and this is what is in fact happening. The disorder is revolutionary disorder and a positive democratic step which the Obama administration so far fails to grasp, or shies away from, or will not mention at least.
