This is a sight that generally makes me feel all pleased and gooey inside. Be a bomb thrower, love bomb throwers.
Bombs, actually rocks and bottles, are being thrown all over the streets of Cairo in protest.
What are our fellow Egyptian homo sapiens protesting against, and what are they protesting for? I read carefully the account in today's New York Times for answers to these two preeminent questions. The answer to the first question is clear: the protests are against the government and President Hosni Mubarak, which are almost synonymous. And there is much to protest against in the government of Hosni Mubarak: corruption, authoritarianism and the other usual suspects in governments like Hosni Mubarak's.
The answer to the second question is not so clear, or clear in it's lack of clarity. The Times describes the protesters as "apparently spontaneous, non-ideological and youthful." Youth is almost synonymous with spontaneity. And with restlessness, The Young and the Restless, right? Isn't that the name of some American soap opera or something? And youths often don't have the knowledge that comes with greater learning to make ideological choices, not that ideological choices are always wise.
So, if the Times description of the protesters is accurate, then the protests are unfocused, and what Egypt's spontaneous youths are protesting for is answered with the blank, uncomprehending stare also often common to youth.
There does not seem to be an undercurrent of Islamic revolution here, at least not yet, nor of "freedom" as that is meant in the West, and as was meant (sort of) by the Tienanmen demonstrators in China in 1989, at least not yet and, in my opinion, inconceivably so in the foreseeable future. For there are no Federalist Society sleeper cells in the Muslim world.
But there is anger in the Muslim world. It is the angriest world in the world it seems to me. So kids, have fun if that's what you're having, be careful 'cause Hosni don't play. We in America are watching you closely. We'll see you down the road, either as friends as I hope or, as enemies, as I think more likely.
