It has been about two weeks since we arrived in Poland, the first of which was spent in a haze of shivering nightmares involving riot police, teargas, gunshots, and general jumpiness; the next, full of the post-shock surrealness of being in small-town, freezing Poland. Finally, we are calm. Poles are sympathetic to the Egyptian situation - they know what revolution is like, and many are no strangers to autocracy or violent suppression. Our neighbour's grandma still hoards "Solidarnosc" memorabilia from her activist days. She says it's hard to be normal once you've lived through a revolution, that it never really leaves you. All the people in Egypt will know this soon. Sitting in my in-laws' living room in a blockhouse, in an ex-German town, hearing stories of post-Communist life nearly makes me cry. Inflation was sudden and absurd, jobs were lost, a game of political revenge started. My husband's generation is called "Generacja Nic" or "Generation Nothing" - the generation that was the first to grow up capitalist, and became a generation of nothingness. 20 years after the fall of communism, my father-in-law received a sudden notice that he will now receive only half his pension, because he served as a civil servant during the communist regime. Even at such a great distance from the revolution, the ripples still disturb peoples' lives. Poland transitioned to an entirely different economy and political system, so a true comparison cannot be made here. However, even though the scenario in a democratic Egypt likely won't be as dramatic or bleak, the effects of sweeping political change are long-reaching and painful.
I can't believe all this started just a few weeks ago, and now the Middle East is erupting - and so is everywhere else. Things hurtle forward like a faulty Toyota. Bahrain's situation is far more complicated than that of Egypt, because they have real sectarian issues, and also a huge US base, not to mention an unsympathetic army which opened live fire on peaceful crowds. Praetorianism fell out of favour in academia long ago; professors would drop the "oh, man on horseback, and all that," referring to Samuel Huntington, pretending like the military is no longer important. It's just not fashionable, because now, developmental politics and eco-politics are (and of course they are important as well). Sadly for all of us, the gaping jaws of the military industrial complex threaten to crush any attempt at democratic reform in places like the Middle East, West Africa and Pakistan. Even with the massive steps forward in Egypt, the formula of a dissolved constitution + army in charge makes me hellishly uneasy. Though it may have chosen to break with Mubarak, it is definitely looking out for its own interests. It is also clear now that the US has no actual strategic foreign policy in place, and that "regional stability" just means "a happy Israel" and "plentiful natural resources coming our way." The Saudis no longer trust the US to stand behind them (and they shouldn't). Any pretense of a commitment to morality or freedom is now moot. The last straw was refusing to condemn Israeli settlement building in the West Bank at the UN meeting, not because they didn't support the resolution, but because the UN was the wrong forum in which to debate this(!). In the long run, this hardheaded and idiotically blind support for Israel, the region's prime aggressor, along with various other puppet leaders and dictators, will decimate the US. But I already envision a new world order in about 30 years, and I don't expect America to be at the top of that food chain. I'm not anti-American...just pragmatic.
Watching helplessly as events unfold in Libya, Bahrain, Sudan, Yemen, Djibouti, Gabon, Egypt, and Algeria, scanning the news and posting online constantly - I have the distinct feeling that if I blink, I will miss everything. But life goes on in my real life; things like showering, working, sleeping... they interrupt the business of watching history unfold. Nevertheless, the information keeps overloading, and I keep consuming, ever hungry, ever angry, ever devastated at the loss of innocent lives.
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