221. Our word "Democracy": How serious is the wound in Egypt?

 
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I know, I know.  What we have done to our political vocabulary by supporting the Egyptian generals who took power from the elected Muslims is too obvious to comment on.  Everybody knows that our word "democracy" no longer means "power to the majority of the people through elections."  Everybody knows that if it doesn't mean that then it has no spine.  And everybody knows that the next time we use it to go nyah nyah to the Russians we will fall on our asses.  But still.

And here's something else everybody, including word-picky English teachers like me, knows: that your linguistic ass is sometimes the last thing that needs protection.  Anybody who doesn't know that should read Michael Gordon and Mark Landler's story in Thursday's New York Times (10-10-13), identifying what currently most needs our protection in the Middle East: the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.  The generals are our best guarantee that the treaty, and therefore Israel, and several hundred American Congressmen, will remain upright.  Gordon and Landler point to what every patriot old in statecaft knows: the political comes before the linguistic.  But still.

But doesn't the ethical come before the political?  If it does then we've put the linguistic further back in the line.  I tell myself that it would be unethical to betray Israel now, after so much support, so much common interest, so much sympathy after the Holocaust.  And betrayal, man that's what Dante said was the worst sin, to be punished on the floor of Hell.  And Dante was speaking for Thomas Aquinas, who spoke for Aristotle, who in ethics spoke for all of Western Civilization.  If you've got that kind of support for your move on the Muslims how can you hold back?  And, more to the point, what excuse do you have to whine about word use?

Well, you might have an excuse, the ever-ready realpolitik excuse, if you were persuaded that what you see as ethical behavior is really tribal behavior.  Loyalty to the Judeo-Christian tribe, upped to Western Tribe, is what drives our actions in the Middle East.  It's a war of tribe against tribe out there, and words are soldiers in that war.  We had some pretty stout ones — like "democracy" and "human rights," with "Enlightenment" backing them up — that are no longer standing up so well.  For the strength of the tribal army alone our generals (word-generals, PR guys) need to know that.  Telling them of the reality is not whining.

But even habitual whiners are making no comments.  Might it be like commenting on a cripple?  After Secretary of State John Kerry, said, right after the coup, that Egypt’s military leaders were “restoring democracy” (NYT 8-1-13) everybody looked away from the word — as they surely will do again after the statement he made Thursday, that "the United States will consider resuming aid to Egypt 'on the basis of performance' that encourages democracy through elections" (Reuters, 10-10-13).  I have no doubt that, as he keeps flogging the poor, broke-back word along, we will keep averting our eyes.

And I suppose we will keep biting our tongues because only the socially clueless, the out-of-it prof, would speak in such poor taste.  That's it, I guess, but maybe not all of it.  There is another reason: consistency, unwillingness to contradict oneself.  This is the way you play the tribal game once you have committed yourself to it.  Tribes fight pragmatically, with rhetoric.  Their test is not, "Is it true?" but "Does it work for us."  When an untruth works better (or in this case, less disastrously) than a truth you use it.  Pointing out that your tribe's spokesman speaks an untruth keeps it from working.  That weakens the tribe.  Good tribesmen don't weaken their tribe.  Ethics again, plus logic.

But there's a remaining question, still realpolitikal, still intra-tribal: what weakens a tribe more, breaking the backs of its words or calling attention to their brokenness?  And, as so often with that kind of question, we have to look long-term and short term.  For the short term I think we might well say that it's best not to call attention to the fact that our finest word-soldier is crippled.  But we can't forget the long term.  Broken backs don't heal quickly, and we don't know what battles lie ahead, what regimes we'll have to claim a difference from.

214. Our Helplessness in Egypt and Israel, and How to Live with It.

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The Times confirms it more firmly every day.  Our man  Abdul Fattah al-Sisi is doing to Egyptians nearly every vile thing Bashar al-Assad did to Syrians and Saddam Hussein did to Iraqis.  He's done far worse things than Putin has done to Russians.

But is he our man?  Well, if somebody who does your work for you is your man, he's our man.  He's helping to secure the safety of Israel.  That's a job we took on long ago and are never going to give up.

We don't like having him as our man.  We take every opportunity to show that he's not our man.  And that even if he were, we have little influence with him.  If we cut off aid to him and his army others would step in with help and he'd keep doing the same things.  {If you aren't convinced that we're helpless read Steven Simon on Tuesday's (8-13) Op-Ed page.}

But, the good old Times.  One day it gives you a piece that convinces you and the next day it gives you a piece that makes you doubt.  (That's the West, man, that's what makes us different from Middle Eastern countries, and different from Russia.)  So on Wednesday there's Eric Schmitt with a story that will convince you (convinced me, though I was already convinced) that we damn well can control al-Sisi and his army.  All we have to do is cut off his access to parts — parts for airplanes and tanks, all American — and he is out of business.

So we can do what we have been able to do all these years, all the time we've been hand-wringing and deploring and calling for moderation.  We are behaving exactly as we behaved with the settlements.  There our presidents, our secretaries of state, our editorialists, our Congressmen would have had to have been idiots not to see what the unchecked move into the West Bank showed them: that Israel intended to take over the whole thing, all the land comprised by ancient Judea and Samaria, the land that was Israel.  We must have seen it but we did nothing but crab about it.  And Israel did nothing but sing away our crabbiness.

Why?  Why did we never do more than deplore and crab and claim helplessness?  Because the Israelis were members of our tribe.  We're with them in their desire to occupy the West Bank and be safe.  I'm with them, emotionally anyway, as soon as I step across the border.  I remember that experience, coming up from Egypt.  I looked around and my heart said, "Yeah, these are my people." Bonded.

And the more they are threatened the tighter the bond becomes.  It's like what happened to my heart when England was threatened in World War II.  "How can I bear to see that green and pleasant land, that jewel in the sea, that England, overrun by Nazis?"  No, President Roosevelt, do what you can to help her.

You don't need a genius to explain this.  My heart loved the literature it was introduced to in school and Sunday school, Shakespeare, the Bible, the story of the Jews, the story of England.  I was made a solid member of the Judeo-Christian tribe, Anglophone branch.

Fine if I hadn't gone to college.  There I was made a member of the worldwide human tribe, which was not a tribe.  It was above tribes, all tribes.  Its claims took precedence over tribal claims.  "Think your brother has claims on you because he's a tribe member?  No, he has claims on you because he's a human being.  His rights are human rights.  They come first."  So I became an heir of the enlightened revolutions of the eighteenth century, and, in the immediate case, can stand as an example of what the West is selling, or trying to sell, in the Middle East.

See what the child's heart is now doing to this educated adult?  It's making him into the biggest hypocrite in the world.  "Come on all you benighted Middle Easterners, come on undeveloped countries, come on Vladimir Putin, join the tribe of the West, adopt constitutional government, follow the rule of law, transfer power through elections, give freedom to the press, and most of all, respect human rights, as my country does.  Except when it conflicts with Israel's needs."

My advice to that educated adult?  Learn to live with it.  This is one place where tribalism has to trump universalism — no, where tribalism is sure to trump universalism.  Whether you like it or not.  When the chips are down you and your fellows are not going to be able to bear seeing Israel go down the tube.  And, as you've learned from Hitler's rise, you've got to resist any motion toward the tube. 

As for your shame on the world stage, bear it.  But bear it gracefully, as gracefully as you can.  Go easy on talk of vile regimes and evil axes.  Evidence-based observers can too easily give you the knife.  "You're no better than they are."

When it comes to guilt, the internal part of shame, don't be too hard on yourself.  A little more education will show you (if you haven't learned already) how necessary occasional hypocrisy is to good outcomes.   And to good people.  Certain kinds of good (like much of the good churches do) would never get done if they weren't done hypocritically.

Furthermore, one or two lapses into tribalism don't ruin you as an advocate for universalism.  You can still be an example.  Just draw the line.  "In this case we simply have to go tribal.  Fair warning.  We can't help it.  But don't think we're giving up on the rule of law, and democracy and human rights and all the rest of the Enlightenment.  It's where humanity needs to go, and will go."

The hard part is going to be avoiding trampling on that inheritance not for needs but for benefit and privilege.  No defense of tribal self-interest is easier than to say, "That humane and enlightened action is the first step to our tribal ruin."  Any Israeli statement to that effect will require close examination.  Especially if it's a step toward reconciliation and compromise.

211. Love democracy, love the killing in Cairo.

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Listen up, third-worlders.  Here's what it like to be a lover of democracy at this moment, with Egypt's army having just killed a couple of hundred Muslims demonstrating for the return of democracy.

No, I'm not going to add to the six dozen ironies already piled up by the developments in Egypt.  I'm just going to explain what's democratic and what isn't.

That killing now, by a dictator installed by an Army coup.  It's not, as it may appear, the opposite of democracy.  It's not like all the strongman takeovers the U.S. has opposed, not like one aristocratic clique overthrowing another in South America, not like a warlord suddenly declaring a heavenly mandate in Asia, not like a Bolshevik few striking in Europe.  Those are all deniers of democracy.  This is an expression of it.  A circuitous expression, yes, but nevertheless an expression.

Here, in big chalk, is the circuit.  Begin with the fact that the U. S. is a democracy.  The things that it does or does not do express the will of its people.  ("Democracy" means "rule by the people," right"?)  Not all the people, but a majority, which means the most votes in Congress.  Votes in the past show that any action that makes Israel less secure will be voted down — if it manages even to be brought up.  Action against the dictator installed by the army coup will in the eyes of Congress make Israel less secure than it would be under a militant Muslim president installed by an election.  It's bound to be voted down or kept from coming up.

To be believed that paragraph requires, probably, six pages of little chalk — whether or not Congressmen do express the will of the people here, whether their vote can be predicted, whether that vote can make a difference in Egypt, why they think an army regime in Egypt will make Israel more secure — but there's just not space here to supply it.  You'll just have to trust me.

Anyway, if you believe as I do that American action against the Egyptian ruling general could stop him (for one thing we could cut off the money that pays his army) then yesterday's killing in Cairo is an expression of democracy, American democracy.  It is the will of the American people that the Egyptian people be denied their will.

Forget trying to relieve the pain of this by showing your abhorrence of killing, Americans.  ("I didn't mean that.  They shouldn't go that far.")  Any time you want other people to do your will they can (as Clausewitz has shown) force you to become a killer just by refusing to do it, up to the end.  If you vote for Israel's security here (or for a Congressman who will vote for it) you show that you want to kill the Egyptians who refuse to accept the removal of their president.  You're a killer.

And forget all the sophistical demonstrations that the elected president wasn't really elected or wasn't really a president or that the coup wasn't really a coup.  The man got a majority of the votes in an election that qualified neutral observers called reasonably free.  There's no reason to believe that another election would turn out differently.  The will of a majority of the Egyptian people has been expressed.  And that's all democracy means, or needs to mean.

So forget, third-worlders, all those golden benefits promised you under the word "democracy."  And don't think it has anything to do with the goodness of a people.  It doesn't assure virtue.  All democracy assures is that the majority of people in your country, the people who most of the time will have the greatest power, or potential power, will have in place the machinery by which they can express their will.  That's good, maybe golden, especially when time comes for a transfer of power, but if it's good it's good only internally.

Externally, in dealing with other nations, you can no more count on it being good than you can count on the human will being good.  And allowing it to be collectively expressed isn't going to improve the odds.  Whatever the collective will is, though, whether it's good or bad, remember: it's just the will of one people, in one country.  If that will denies the will of another people in another country, if it denies them even unto death, that could be very bad.  We can call it terrible names — "hypocritical," "evil," "criminal."  But we can't call it "undemocratic."

210. David Brooks's Bad People

Do you hear what I hear in David Brooks's column yesterday (7-5-13) in the Times?  In his words describing the Muslims running Egypt and justifying their removal?  He says "they have absolutist, apocalyptic mind-sets."  He says "they have a strange fascination with a culture of death."  I hear, "These are bad people."

In democracies being bad can't be admitted as a justification for throwing people out before an election.  You have to do bad.  Do something that prevents the election of somebody to replace you and you have done the one thing that democracies have to call bad, since it ends democracy. 

You can do something that will lead to the prevention of an election, or has a high probability of leading to prevention, and that could be bad enough to justify your removal, but still you must do something.  Do something. 

That's often complicated, tracing the doing, and that's where we rely on experts and columnists to show us what's been done, and where it leads.  They're like defenders and prosecutors, going over the evidence and following laws that define guilt.  Readers, like jurors, know that in democratic societies beliefs are not a crime.  Display bad ones to them and you're out of bounds.  "What are you, thought police?"

I think Brooks is a little embarrassed calling these people bad.  That's why he goes on to call them incompetent.  They are "incapable of running a modern government," they "lack the mental equipment," incompetence  "is built into the intellectual DNA of radical Islam."  I can believe what he says, and more.  Certainly Morsi and his Brotherhood didn't play it very smart after they took office.

The thing is, in a democracy we have a remedy for that.  At the next election we throw the evil, stupid rascals out.  That's what we have to do if our constitution does not provide for an impeachment process, as, I understand, the Egyptian constitution does not.

We in the West speak to the world for law and logic and constitutions.  We speak to the world for our national game.  America is Babe Ruth.  And oh what that does for us now when we think of trying to write a constitution that will fit in the actions we (Brooks, at least) are now approving.  "Governments will be removed by ballot, but if governments are run by very bad people, or very incompetent people, or very stupid people, they may be removed by the army."

I know.  You can hardly open your mouth now about Egypt without fourteen ironies and a satire leaping out of it.  But not all ironies are equal.  The ones roused by defenders of the army's action in Egypt take the cake.  And shove it down our throats.

But hell, gag on irony and there are many important actions you'll be incapacitated for.  Israel's security is important.  An Egyptian army in our pay ($1.3 billion a year) working with a sympathetic regime is a much firmer guarantee of that security than a regime sympathetic to Hamas promising that yes, yes, they will give us our money's worth.

So what, then?  Read Brooks and gag.  He's probably gagging too.  You just have to remember that watching Israel go down the tube could be lot more sickening than watching your democratic ideals go down.