What Egypt Can Teach America: Giving Up On Democracy

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
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I found this article rather insightful, the US has experienced two recent constitutional crisis, but in Egypt, the law more or less evaporated, and the population continues on in a very dysfunctional manner. I wonder where the US will be in 20 years at this pace… strong military, but the Constitution is going down the drain rapidly. I doubt our system of checks and balances will matter much once the law becomes a complete fiction nobody believes in anymore. Just becomes a bunch of administrative cliques, half effectively without purpose beyond ideas on paper. Law effectively dissolves, strong military… will this soon be us?

dailynewsegypt.com/2015/07/0 … ly-likely/

Another revolution is improbable – but social explosion is increasingly likely

By Mohammed Nosseir

One of the many advantages of having a properly functioning democratic system is that heated elections are invariably followed by a period during which society settles down as winners get busy with the business of ruling and losers start preparing for the next round of elections. Ordinarily, the rule of law ensures that during the few years between elections, all citizens (whether they belong to the political majority or minority) enjoy equal rights. However, because no basic democratic mechanism is in place in this country, last year’s presidential elections concluded in a severe polarisation of our society, a polarisation that could eventually turn Egypt into a failed state.

For decades, Egypt has been ruled by a philosophy wherein a very tiny portion of society (the elite) harvests most of the country’s privileges at the expense of the great majority of the population. Mubarak’s consecutive governments administered this philosophy of rule expertly, and were also responsible for categorising the elite into groups, handling any tensions or quarrels that arose among them over government business opportunities. Mubarak was not a fair ruler, but he managed to appoint functioning governments and to rule over a repressed, intimidated society, manipulating individual citizens according to his will.

Although this philosophy of rule was completely dismantled after the 25 January Revolution, it has unfortunately not been replaced by a true democratic system and a proper enforcement of rule of law. Today, in the absence of any identifiable governing mechanism, Egyptians live in a loose social structure built on fragile relationships, a condition that is reflected in the millions of struggles between the state and its citizens, as well as amongst citizens themselves. The nonexistence of a proper governing mechanism has caused citizens to engage negatively with one another. With the elite’s loss of its traditional superior status and the refusal of the masses to reoccupy a subordinate position, conflicts in our society are presently settled primarily by muscle power.

This tension is not only well underway between Al-Sisi’s affiliates and his opponents; it also exists among the president’s supporters who are fighting to reinstate the old corrupt mechanism that serves their personal interests best. Many citizens used to argue that this loose state structure was purposely maintained so that the incoming president could gain easy credit by putting it in order. However, after over a year in power Al-Sisi seems to be capitalising on this fluid state structure to justify any harsh measures adopted against his opponents.

The president has blocked all channels that could lead to another uprising or revolution, claiming that his assumption of responsibility for ruling the country has satisfied the vast majority of Egyptians. However, state instability and popular uprisings do not always take the form of revolution; the current dysfunctional government and extensive social disintegration put the Egyptian state at risk of failure. Additionally, Al-Sisi’s opponents are fuelling the negativity that is already inherent in our society to realise their goal of hastening the collapse of the state.

The president has successfully intervened to solve a number of contentious events that arose among various professional segments of society; he defused the recent tense situation between lawyers and the Police Department and managed to resolve a number of strikes organised by members of various professions to demand salary increases. These efforts are really quite insignificant compared to the innumerable struggles that Egyptian citizens face daily; 90 million inhabitants are living together without any application of rule of law, and without even the possibility of resolving conflicts through social reconciliation and settlement processes, with no government intervention. Furthermore, not a single issue has been tackled at the roots and justly resolved; most conflicts are still alive and simmering and could become heated and erupt at any moment.

We were living with many challenges in the past, but they were ones that could be managed by bending the laws in favour of Mubarak’s affiliates. Our current challenges are uncontrollable; they concern the defectiveness of justice vis-à-vis society as a whole. Furthermore, Egypt is evolving, quite slowly perhaps, but change is definitely underway and the old methods will not survive.

The risk that we may well be facing today is not that of replacing one president with another; it is the risk of potential social collapse. The real threat that our country is facing lies in the dysfunctionality of all the Egyptian governments that came into power in the aftermath of the 2011 revolution, including the present government. Rather than pacify and calm society, the upcoming parliamentary elections (expected to be held within the framework of an extremely poor organisational structure and a disputed election law) will very likely trigger even more problems.

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Once the law goes awry most people are still going to want stability and easy lives. Systems come and go but people will always want the comfort law gives them and other teddy bears. That law can change all it likes.

What i mean to say though, is that the societal turmoil will always be redressed by the desire and need fo cohesion.

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Egypt is building a megacity ironically right now, out of the desert:

vice.com/read/is-egypts-prop … insane-293

Can they deliver on it? I don’t know. Obviously they can start it, but they are fighting a nasty war in the Sinai against ISIS, neglecting a hugh chunk of the bottom rung of the social strata.

US build Washington DC from scratch using early 19th century tech. Pakistan managed to build Islamabad, which is a highly advanced city (full of backward shitheads, they were tribal people thrown into the best design the 20th century could develop, wasn’t a smooth transition).

I don’t know. If socialism leads to economic and democratic collapse, as people keep demanding to spend more, and neglect after a while the maintence of comprehensible and stable laws, last place a well meaning quasi-fascist state can turn is a new, grand building scheme.

Take the fucked up population from location A, where nothing works, but it in newly built B, where government and support structures are geographical demarcated in relation to residential and commercial aspects much better.

Problem is, Angola and Myanmar did just this, didn’t work. Angola has a new empty modern city (cost of rent is way too high, and the population and jobs are all still in old shantytown city. Chinese built it expecting to reap profits, nobody will touch it.

Saudi Arabia is doing it, difficult to tell. In some ways you can say Canada did it with Edmonton, but that’s due to fail bad once we switch away from oil. We doubled the efficiency of solar panels last year, and can store wind powered electricity longer now.

China of course, pops a few cities up every now and then… but its hard to tell long term if this will work. I’m talking two hundred years from now… some if them are bound to fail in our lifetimes, as they are completely spontaneous and built by corrupt governments who just threw buildings up expecting quick returns.

US might go into a building surge here as our laws collapse too, with a humvee on every street corner, and mass protests and riots a common feature.

4

Turg

Building that ugly monstro-city would give them work though? So it may be an attempt to keep many of them in work and hence people have things + responsibility they tend to buckle.
Why don’t they just build them like their ancients! …but with wi-fi naturally. :stuck_out_tongue:

To me, as someone born into a socialist family, it seams like the powers that be has done everything they can to get rid of socialism and mostly been successful. They have killed off much of the counter-culture and all major communist opposition etc.

Isis and what’s left of any other kinds of rebels, are a minority in comparison with the past. If i may use a yin/yang analogy, when one opposite squeezes the other almost to oblivion it just gets smaller but stronger, more determined. …but you can never quite rub the darkness out and eventually some kind of equilibrium will be arrived at.

I think maybe china is just trying to use up as much resources as possible? such that everything returns to simplicity. …kinda fits with socialist thinking no?

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Sorry, I see socialism for what is is, Favors to a outcast segment of society for the control and benifit of the controllers, and its always to the detriment of the dependents. I’d rather be a feral boar than a pinned in pig.

If you look back, to the initial impulse ideologically and in terms for social organization for modern socialism, it happened during the late medieval population explosion. Prior to that, if your population grew, you just moved on feral ground, set up shop… as long as it wasn’t a hunting grounds for the military (a military practiced adopted by the Romans from Hunnic example for training calvary archers), they at most list and tax you, tell you you fall under lord so and so, and expect you to provide levy and enlistment work.

After the population explosion, communities were popping up faster than the state could keep track of them, and the state had already found it was easier to give land grants to useful locals… they’d pick some land, and say its yours… they arrived, only to discover a community already was there, they get evicted (best case scenario) and move to anither location already being granted to someone else. In the end people were hiding in absurd communities, simply because they were not useful, couldn’t be made useful for whatever reason.

Socialism is the toadying IP to the state in return for land and security. The modern concept of property did directly descended from fear and need. Its why we have a “right to property”. Those continuously dispossessed have no such right, to thus day the state comes up with absurd balances between a destitute person’s right to property, private property overlaps- who has priority (almost never the homeless) and the needs and necessity for the law to trample over and oppress the weak who can’t fit into the socialist scheme, which is far too small and backwards to fit all, and is little more than an excuse the wealthy has to fuck the little guy over. In these circumstances, every rich bastard is a socialist when their conscience is roused “we tried, we had program X, what can we possibly do but destroy their belongings, fine them, jail them, intimidate and then ostrachize them of out cilommunity’s limits.”

Fuck that socialism. Every upper and middle class yuppie Marxist falls under that banner. I’ve seen far too many people crushed under its heel. It forces the destitute into ghettoes, exposed to criminal elements. Children grow up in gangs, drug users.

I’m not for it at all.

You know how we broke the socialism, and managed to change the system? We didn’t just rebel… I mean, many did, but it went literally no where… as I said, the foundation of property was fear and need, in exchange for being useful… states are very good at mobilizing on this basis. It came from rebelling and pushing past the fear- getting to the point you could earn a state’s begrudging respect, where it realized it was useless to continue on fighting you, and being offered a pact of concord and rights… rights that went both ways. We forced the reintegration back into the community. Serfs got their free communities, not from socialism, but defiance, running away from it. We got our towns that way. We got rights to immigrate, found new territories, freedom of movement, to pursue the trade we want, to marry out of class.

I’ll be damn if I accept to yoke around my neck, be told by a bunch of yuppies they care, and spend my existence destitute, or go heavily in debt for a career that won’t be there by time I old. All I see in the cities growing these days are the number of homeless, and the exapnse of universities. Its a get rich quick pyramid scheme, obviously isn’t working. Those homeless could of lived in the housing that used to be in the 20 blocks the damn university tore down, instead of switching towards a property minimal internet based form of education.

If you can’t eat, accept food stamps so you don’t become a brigand. If you have children who can die from exposure, accept the socialism to the degree you must to get them to adulthood, then break free. Do whatever you can to break your kids free of state control. Don’t let them fall into debt to it.

Population growth isn’t based on property, but the history of our property is socialist, and it by necessity divorces a segment of the excess community AWAY from the community. We never had another way of dealing with it. Those who commit infractions have ever stiffer penalties and are outcast from that point foreword, those who don’t will soon be arrested and given them anyways.

In order to survive, and preserve human dignity and freedom, you have to evade, stand up for yourself, and break their logic of pursuit and repression.

If the lowest people in society don’t fight for theur rights as individuals, they will in a few generations lose their lives. This is what I’ve learned from Marxist. They didn’t fight to become individuals with rights inherent in and of themselves, but yo unionize and become a collective… the individual got stamped out in the name of a socialist utopia, and mass genocides soon followed. Communities died, because there were no individuals there to stop them. People lacked the wits to resist, affirm, and survive… despite the use of force used against them. The WW2 front between Russia and Germany was the ultimate expression of socialism… two socialist states locked in total war, with people trying to survive in between. All those fucking high ideas down the drain.

If the individual looses sight of three things, his individuality, his need to survive, and the need to build/integrate into the community as a respected equal, socialism wins, and the community becomes split. The weak still become disenfranchised. This is obvious, look at most formerly socialist states. The people still lack the idea of individuality… life is miserable, everyone gets fucked over, save for a few mafios and economic barons.

There is no future glorious Utopia, that war and eternal conflict will win for all time. Property isn’t the root of the problem, it was actually a clever stopgap to the problem. The problem is organized fear and necessity as the driving force between the haves and have nots… Socialism systematises this on a logic, but it can’t foresee its consequences. It crushes the individual, makes those dependent witless and fearful, and if successful, inevitably produces a surplus that must be criminalized and outcast to preserve the balance.

Many countries, like India and Brazil, continue with the medieval phenomena… Illegal communities/colonies pop up within weeks out of nowhere, thousands swarm and build in brick. Next to impossible to dislodge, and the socialist state stumbles and fumbles, trying to provide utilities. China tried to spearhead this, building the cities themselves to maintain control. In the US, most of our land is sealed off to protect some high minded liberal’s desire to save the newts. Land is priced at absurd prices the homeless can never afford. The rich socialists offer pathetic excuses, say they have (extremely impractical) programs, and leave you stranded in some hellhole, while they worry about who’s going to die next on The Walking Dead.

I don’t believe revolution is the solution, but a rightful land snatch on some prime wild real estate is. If we can’t be a part of the community that is, then build a new one… as that is EXACTLY what the haves have always done. They control the laws, ostrachize the helpless, make us scared of homelessness and being cast out, even though demographically for a statistical portion of society, a chunk has to go by default.

Don’t die, learn to survive. Stand up on your own two feet and stare the socialist in the eyes in defiance. Don’t ask for handouts if you can otherwise survive, and keep others alive too, away from their cops, their courts, their fear of the other. Stick in there till you get human status returned to you. You lose your status as a human as soon as you accept their socialism. We gave seen it happen in Europe, and our system has the same origins. I have no intention to gamble my life, and the lives of others like me, and our offspring, on some upper class economic theoryvfor a utopua. I want to survive, and be seen as a respectable equal. Socialism prevents this. To hell with it.