Sunday, October 30, 2011

It's Official: Tahrir Square Supplants Jetsons/Flintstones as TLF's Favorite Trope

Thomas L. Friedman, sage of all he surveys, appears to have left his heart in Tahrir Square; where his brain is is anybody's guess:
I was in Tahrir Square in Cairo for the fall of Hosni Mubarak, and one of the most striking things to me about that demonstration was how apolitical it was. When I talked to Egyptians, it was clear that what animated their protest, first and foremost, was not a quest for democracy — although that was surely a huge factor. It was a quest for “justice.” Many Egyptians were convinced that they lived in a deeply unjust society where the game had been rigged by the Mubarak family and its crony capitalists. Egypt shows what happens when a country adopts free-market capitalism without developing real rule of law and institutions.       
That's our Tom for you: noticing things that don't exist (free-market capitalism in dictator Mubarak's Egypt) while ignoring things that couldn't be plainer (the quest for democracy and justice not as the West understands them but as Islam's sharia and its avid Egyptian fans, the Muslim Brotherhood, do).

Sorry, boys. You're out and that Cairo square is in

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