Still A Long Way To Go.. But We'll Get There

After the incidents of Bloody Sunday at Maspero, where the army mercilessly butchered 19 people who did nothing wrong except protest peacefully to be given their basic human rights, the air in Cairo reeks of anger, confusion, desperation and sadness.

The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) has successfully managed over the course of the past seven months (since march 19th, 2011 to be exact, which is in my humble opinion THE turning point in this revolution) to dismantle any sort of threat that might loosen its grip on power. Long gone are the days where all Egyptians stood together as one and protested for the right to scream in the face of tyranny and injustice in middle of winter.

The current political landscape is so polarized that it's almost impossible to find a voice of reason, a middle-of-the-road political movement that can truly represent and be the voice of the non-political, restless, and silent majority who want nothing more than to just live. I won't even bother to mention political parties, they are so insignificant, so amateurish in their message and in their work, so unpopular on the street, so easily played by SCAF, that no one pays attention to them. Many of the so called activists try to rally people around fairly popular slogans of "freedom" and "social justice", but the crudeness of their method (protest, strike, protest, strike, and when all protests and strikes fail to reach critical mass, protest and strike some more) has totally turned people off. They are so caught up in their own political dogma and in the new found fame (dare I say, fortune?) to listen to anyone outside their very small circle. All SCAF had to do to isolate these activists is just let them do their thing, because they are so far off what the overwhelming majority of Egyptians really care about right now, and that is security.

SCAF understood that since day 1, and has successfully managed to paint every political ideology that is any different from what Mubarak's regime had to offer as anti- stability and security. The Islamists? They're fanatics who don't have any respect for human rights or personal freedoms. The liberals? They want Egypt to be a moral black-hole; they desire a decadent society that commits and cherishes every vice known to man. The leftists? They are atheist communists in disguise who want to revive the old Soviet model and try to prey on the poor with promises of an easy life and a classless society. The Copts? They want to build a church on every corner, have connections abroad that want to undermine Egypt's government, and believe that Muslims took this land by force from them, its rightful owners.

Clearly these are all lies, but SCAF is taking full advantage of the decades Egyptians have spent under rulers who made sure that we don't understand or even know "the other". And in the middle of all this confusion, the average Egyptian has gotten away from following political news outside of what he hears at the office's water cooler. I don't think Egyptians are to blame here. In even the most advanced democracies, 98% of the population is politically active only one day in the calendar: election day. This is a fact that SCAF knows all too well and political activists love to ignore. You cannot have a meaningful protest every Friday, much less a meaningful one every day by every union. In the meantime, Egyptians are tired. They are weary. They don't get why all these protests and strikes are happening. They don't understand why Copts are upset. They don't know why things haven't changed for the better after the revolution and frankly, they don't want to know. they're back to their cafe, their soap opera, their work. You go to Heliopolis or Maadi, and life there is so far removed from Tahrir and its action that you might think they exist in a different country, much less the same city.

However, I'm not as upset about all of the above as much as I am about how numb we have become to news about human rights violations. Try to see readers' comments on news regarding new torture allegations against police and army officers, or about a church that was torn down, or a political activists who's summoned before or even jailed by the military judiciary. The comment you see from people who are mostly educated, belong to middle-class and use the internet are nothing short of devastating. Where is our humanity?

One a positive note, things are not that bleak. The revolution is not dead. The street may not be as active as it was back in march, but it's still much better than how it was pre-jan25. But we have to come to peace a few facts:

1- Protests are so yesterday. The worst thing you can do when a protest fails in gathering enough support is to call for another protest soon after to make up for it. There hasn't been a really successful protest at Tahrir since the one on July 8th. Ikhwan (Muslim Brotherhood) and other Islamist groups played it smart since then and a have focused on campaigning instead of protesting. Activists, due to their uncompromising attitude and revolutionary zeal have completely ignored the fact that we're having election in mere months, even threatened boycotting elections altogether, and instead focused on labor strikes and demonstrations in front of key governmental buildings. The results of the activists strategy have been mixed, but never enough to quiet them down or shut them up.

2- SCAF will stay until presidential elections are held. This is simply a fact. I believe they really don't want to rule. That they just want a puppet president. Instead of pushing for moving the elections up the calendar, try to use the time we have to campaign for the upcoming parliamentary elections since they will determine who will end up drafting the constitution. This shouldn't be done via protests because SCAF uses protests as an excuse to judtifying staying longer to maintain a minimal sense of stability (or so the public believes).

3- Get out of your ideological corner and try to reach out to people in the middle. Political parties as well as activists are too comfortable sitting with like-minded people that when you ask each of them what Egyptians want you get a different answer. Islamists think Egyptians go to sleep and wake up with only one thought in their heads: applying Sharia. Liberals would be fooling themselves if Egyptians want unlimited freedom (although limited freedom is no freedom at all, but I digress). Leftists think Egyptians buy their anarchist drivel despite the dozens of Egyptian proverbs that are all about respecting authority, and yes, workers and farmers want authority too. The changes each of these groups want for this country are far too radical to be imposed in an election. Changes to society and the way it behaves come from the bottom up, not from the top down. Therefore, all the fear-mongering should stop. Islamists won't be able to force women to wear veils. Liberals won't force you to wear skimpy clothes. Leftists will probably adopt the very same free market ideas they love to hate if they get to power.

Things are not as bad as they seem. I'm not saying that what happened in the last few days did not deal a major blow to Egypt and its image abroad, but like the saying goes: "What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger." If it wasn't for all the humiliation and suffering and brutality that we endured as a people for decades, we wouldn't have had something as beautiful as jan25. Now is not the time to fold. This is where the going gets tough. I'm sure we're more than up to the task.