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.

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.

208. "Enlightened" and "Benighted" in Egypt

 

In Egypt, see, you've got these benighted people who don't believe in democracy or any of the other things the people of the West came up with in their Age of Enlightenment.  They still think in the religious terms — "godly"-"ungodly," "believer"-"non-believer," "good"-"evil"— people used before they became enlightened, and began to speak only of the "reasonable" and "unreasonable."  These benighted people are now in power.

"And how did they get in power?"

Oh, in the most enlightened way, through an election.  They were the majority.  But now they are doing, and threatening to do, and saying, very unenlightened things.  The enlightened people are so eager to get rid of them that they say they'll welcome a coup by the generals.

"But isn't that a very benighted thing to do, bring in the army to get rid of elected officials?"

I know.  But these people in power are really evil people.  They have killed in the name of religion.  They'll impose religion in daily life.  They'll stamp out the Enlightenment in Egypt, the few flames that are starting to rise.

"So if people are really evil you can set the benighted on them.  But you'll still be enlightened yourself?"

I know.  I've gone benighted on you.  But don't you see, I have to do that in order to defend the Enlightenment.  It's the reasonable thing to do.

"You know, your confidence in what's reasonable strikes me as almost supernatural.   You just know that these benighted people are not going to permit you to throw them out in the normal, democratic, enlightened way.  You just know that their imposition of benighted things in daily life assures their imposition of themselves as unelected rulers.  You just know that the people of Egypt can't bring off the traditional Western way of throwing rascals out.  You just know that there's something besides elections that defines democracy.  You just know you'll do less damage to democracy by turning tyrant yourself than by waiting to see if somebody else will turn tyrant.  I don't see how anybody with a reasonable, secular conception of knowledge could know those things.  Are you sure you don't believe in a higher power?"

114. Reconciliation in Egypt

The news from Egypt is so heartening I can't resist commenting on it. You remember what we were looking at there, this impasse over the new government? The military council and the Muslim Brotherhood dug in? Do you remember your feelings? Me, I was asking, "What hope is there when junta generals and religious zealots go up against each other? When has either one ever softened?"

Then Monday, the word from Cairo: an accord reached on "the creation of a presidential-parliamentary government, a legal system no more Islamic than the previous one and broad guarantees of freedom of religion and expression." It would include some degree, still to be worked out, of civilian control over the military.

There was little doubt in my mind about the zealous fundamentalism of the Brotherhood. I believed what Mary Crane said about it (for the Council on Foreign Relations), that it "seeks to Islamicize societies from the ground up and compel governments in Muslim countries to adhere to sharia, or Islamic law."

Nor did I have much doubt about the generals' determination. I believed that their position let them run and profit from a lot of key industries, knew that they did not pay taxes, and figured they had a lot of income they'd lose if they lost power. They had every reason to dig in.

So there they were, strongmen and zealots, staring each other down, and by the track record of every other horse in either stable there was no way they were going to send me home happy. Yet that's what they did! They sat down and said, "Hell, we're both in this together. Let's work something out." You'd think they were veterans of the democratic process. That's what we say over here, in this old democracy, isn't it? Isn't it?