Ah dear hearts, what a week. Sending out great admiration and appreciation of the Egyptian Revolution overthrowing a corrupt and cruel regime with non-violent tactics, beauty, song and dance and a social networking that one can only dream of.
Revolution on Friday, into Lincoln's Birthday on Saturday and today it's all about the love. My parents are celebrating their 52nd wedding anniversary in Heaven It's my brother's 14th wedding anniversary and My wife and I are celebrating our 4th. Romance runs in the family.
I saw the Egyptian revolution as a love thing as well. That popular uprising had so much love and faith and courage. Did you see how they cared and protected each other? Yes, they have triumphed. Watching this unfold over the last three weeks was a privilege and a duty, or as Obama would say "a teachable moment". What did we learn? We learned that there is an exciting youth movement in the world. That young minds adept at cyber communication are using it to advance freedom and democracy all across the Arab world. We learned that even when "they" send in government thugs demonstrators must remain calm and non-violent. We learned that what seems impossible is only so in our minds. The power of collective cooperation is unstoppable.
The underlying causes of the Egyptian revolution were the thirty years of oppression and dictatorship, the immediate cause was the self immolation of a vegetable vendor in Tunisia who set himself on fire in protest of Failed economic policies and hopelessness. this sparked the revolt in Tunisia and spread like wildfire into Egypt. They say Yemen, Iran, Jordan, Algeria and Syria are poised on the precipice of revolution as well. I say huzzah. In'shallah, That means God willing, or Allah willing.
People wonder if the same kind of popular revolt could happen here, what with the unemployment rate, unprecedented foreclosures, food and gas prices going up, the gutting of the US economy by corporate raiders in cahoots with the Feds. People are scared and angry, but the likely hood of a non-violent overthrow of the gov't doesn't seem destined for us. Why? We'll first and foremost one of the key factors to the success of Egypt's revolution was the fact that they were all Egyptians. Egypt is not a "melting Pot" like the U.S. supposedly is. We are not one people.
We don't care for each other or pretend to love each other in America. Class and Racial divisions are dangerous, mean, violent and resentful. The power of unity/similarity like mindedness common ground is essential for that kind of victory. We have nothing like that in this country.
The other extremely obvious difference is that our civilian population is armed to the teeth. 287 million guns. The Egyptians were unarmed. They did have knives and used them for self defense and defending their neighborhoods, business, hospitals and so on. But they did not have a civilian army protected by a 2nd Amendment.
The other key to their success was the alliance of the military, love if you will. That was one of the most moving images coming across the screen of this popular movement; People sitting on tanks sitting in the street and the soldiers being gifted flowers and food. Can you envision that kind of accord here? I don't think so. Americans are estranged,suspicious, polarized and looking for an excuse to blow each others heads off. So what happens next?
We ignite an American revolution of self respect and love, using social networking tools, we search for the ever allusive common ground.. How do we solicit that kind of fundamental transformation. We start with ourselves. Today is a perfect day to fall in love with yourself. Sure send your sweetheart some chocolate, but give yourself some flowers too and a great big hug and lots of kisses. Call your answering machine and leave yourself a message, everything you want to hear and promise to cherish yourself forever. That could be the key to world's liberation. Because we all know Love makes the world go round in a what? In a revolution.
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