President Barack Obama has been reluctant to meddle, but the White House reported he told Morsi on Monday that “democracy is about more than elections.”
See also, for example, “Obama to Morsi: Democracy is more than elections” — USA Today; “Egypt’s Morsi says he won’t step down, vows to protect his legitimacy” — NBC World News (yesterday).
So what else is it about?
One might suggest it’s also about living in a world with fewer communication and trade boundaries and, at the same time, with either more dangerous (nuclear) or more fragile (solar panel) essential civilian and military technologies that demand of the earth’s human cargo greater overall cooperation and security.
Basically, democracy, which is reliant on the development of conversations as broad, inclusive, and open as possible, is about (I’m unbelievably about to borrow from the Chinese on this one) “harmonious relations”.
🙂
That’s what democracy — but also, heavily, modernity — is about, and however I / you / we create the next advanced political ecology that attends to improvements in “Qualities of Living” (physically, psychologically, spiritually) in defined areas and regions of interest, we may not have as much choice as we think, and certainly today not the choice of contributing to empires built around the grandiose delusions and narcissistic excesses of a very few individuals absolutely full of themselves and convinced they can do no wrong.
Those have reached the end of a certain part of their script, but as perhaps signaled by the British Monarchy and others, people are not going to stand for being flattened out Soviet style either — that course in human affairs lost its luster some decades ago.
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I myself live inside a mansion tucked inside a cabin outfitted within an apartment of approximately one-thousand square feet, including the balcony: well equipped also with “champagne tastes and beer money”, I’ve done what Walter Mitty could not and crammed into the space a theater, library, news desk, production facility, bar, grille, and motel.
(One may do a lot with a little given imagination).
It would seem comfort attends a prince — who isn’t a prince and knows it — however poor he may be (will work for compensation while attempting to maintain life and work style).
How about power?
I employ — rather deploy — only myself.
I don’t even own a whip.
*****
To a Sudanese Woman:
Some months ago, I watched a video of punishment meted out to you—a lawfully mandated public whipping that I understand is not uncommon in your country. I have seen many instances of human brutality, but this one was particularly harrowing.
In the midst of my revulsion, certain thoughts surfaced.
There seems to be on YouTube at least a few recordings of similarly dehumanizing, humiliating, and altogether sadistic behavior, even, so claimed, a Saudi boy whipping a garbage man until he cries and laughing about it.
This next, a BBC clip, also more up to date (July 3, 2013), is about the Al Qaeda types contributing to revolutionary forces in Syria:
Aside: I have no idea what Qatar or the United States government are doing even remotely associating themselves with the above in Syria. If such represent proxy forces on the front of a potential Islamic democracy in Syria, the same need to be regarded as the first enemy of it and curtailed with finality.
*****
Egyptians, by seeing through the deposing of a dictator in early development, have walked past the gates of hell (as perhaps featured in the above clip) and if taking one step backwards to military rule may well go on to take two forward into the more dignified grace of a a more civil, honest, inclusive, and productive democracy.
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