Ain’t it funny?
Ain’t it funny how those who yarp the loudest about freedom and justice can’t actually stand it when it occurs?
We have one party who has run on nothing but More Freedom! Less Government! for thirty years. They never meant a word of it.
We have another party who claims to support the lessor against the stronger, but sells them out every time.
Together -as Lewis Black wisely stated, – one side has a bad idea and the other goes “Wait! I can make it shittier!”
And what about the man in charge?
For all the cruelty and hardship of our world, we are not mere prisoners of fate. Our actions matter, and can bend history in the direction of justice.
BARACK OBAMA, Nobel Lecture, Dec. 10, 2009
Well, there are about 2 million Egyptians in a plaza with tanks aimed at their heads who would like you to bend some damn history into the direction of justice. And if not justice, then at least direct Mubarak to the airport. Because those 2 million- and the rest of Egypt behind them- are right. If you are willing to stand for freedom with a tank pointed at your head, you are right. Even if you’re wrong, and end up with some ooga booga Islamic whatever, you’re still right. Because you are willing to die for your freedom. In America we’re willing to die under the heels of an unemployed mother of 3 for a $39 dvd player at Wal-Mart on Black Friday.
Here in America we prattle on about “Bringing democracy to the Middle East”, and then piss ourselves when it actually occurs. And now, with signs of hope in Tunisa, Yemen, and now Egypt, all the staunch defenders of freedom are running for the exits:
This virus is spreading throughout the Middle East.
“Mob riots like this,” she warned, “have never led to something good.”
Be it gay marriage, or drug laws, or revolution, those that spray the most spit about freedom can’t see to actually, you know, allow it. Because they fear freedom, because freedom means they aren’t in control. And they crave control. Left to our own devices, we might not elect them again. Or bail them out. Or fight in their wars. Or grow their crops for shit wages. And that is simply unacceptable. So when two million people crowd a city square in Cario, they think Times Square and shudder. But they need not worry. Despite the lunatic ramblings of Glenn Beck, this nation doesn’t have what it takes to revolt.
It is said that Chinese prison camps are remarkably easy to control. See, they put a thousand or so inmates in a yard, watch who the men gather around- and kill them. Without leaders, the rest are easily manageable. We are a nation without leaders. We have cheerleaders, and thieves, and despots, but we have no leaders. Not someone to control us, but to inspire us, and the rest of the world toward a more just future. Someone who doesn’t accept the Nobel Prize with empty platitudes about freedom while sending drones over Pakistan.
We need the strength of will, and commitment to freedom exercised by those two million in a square in Cario. That a nation that is as potentially great as ours cannot seem to find it within in self to be as exceptional as some trumpet it to be, well, that ain’t funny at all.
