Looking farther into the more distant future, had democratic transition been successful, one could envisage the creation of what might have become known as the United States of the Middle East, a formidable power with enormous resources, both human and…
In ignoring the geographic, political-economic, ethnic, religious impediments to the universalization of the human idea, Americans repeat those ineluctably pleasing, necessary operations of the spirit that tell us our luck – or the sum of our combined advantages in relation to geography, politics, economics, ethnicities, and religions – is deserved, a product of our virtues and a proof of them, whatever costs to others not only unavoidable, but just.
Any opinion we form on the exception is an opinion we form about and for ourselves, of and in our own interest. Non-dialectical political science is purely pseudo-science on this matter that would be most important to it, if only it could ever remove itself from the inquiry, but every attempted movement away from the center of discussion converts necessarily and immediately into a new problem for the selfsame discussion, a new proposition of the included, the excluded, and the difference. The discussion is the tracking of this motion: We continue it for the sake of putting our prejudices to tests for them to fail. Suspicion or resistance on the part of the reader must also vary with his or her own also inextricably compromised position.
Egypt is getting its first legitimate parliament in over half a century, and that alone will shift the dialogue from the streets to the government itself. And that is decidedly a very good thing.
