American Water

The problem with history is the people

tied up in it. The problem with people

is the history tied up in them. 

If  the U.S. of A. is not to blame for the transcendent meditation on democracy currently unfolding in Egypt, it is assured to play several uncomfortable roles in its future.  The formulation of these roles represents nothing less than an existential valuation of democracy as an actual system of government rather than as a purely virtual entity.

I emphasize the word “actual” because it is a vague and paradoxical notion that Zizek treats effectively enough in his recent lecture “The Reality of the Virtual.” One of his early points is the well-trodden one that symbolic authority, in order to be operative, has to remain virtual.  The first example he uses to explain this is that of Christmas, and one has no real gripe with the idea that Santa Claus maintains his strength as an operative fiction because “we only have to presuppose another person to believe” in him for it to be so.

His next example (the one relevant to this discussion) reflects a delightfully practical Eastern European sensibility:

“I don’t think anyone believes in democracy, but nonetheless, we want to maintain appearances…there is some purely virtual entity whom we do not want to disappoint, who has to be kept innocent, ignorant…the paradox is that although nobody effectively believes, it is enough that everybody presupposed someone else to believe. The belief is actual.  It structures reality.”

It is a true minority of Americans who have similarly resigned democracy to the virtual, so for many of us this argument loses a degree of authority here.  Who is anybody to say that our belief in democracy, of all things, can be questioned?  At the very bedrock of Americanism is the notion of democracy’s unquestionable legitimacy; any attack on it is not likely to be met on this side of the Atlantic with a bouquet of roses.

Which is what makes our perceived role in Egypt’s transformation so damn interesting.  Politicians on the hill have been grumbling privately (and somewhat publicly) about the potential for the Muslim Brotherhood to seize the opportunity of a fair election to win seats and establish a threatening Islamist state.

This, to quote a popular chant of late, is what democracy looks like.  Actually looks like. The U.S. government does not have the same luxuries of popular ignorance it had in the past when displacing or replacing democratically-elected leaders abroad with those more sympathetic to its goals.  The internet for now has changed that, which means that the next few years in Egypt could end up being the most strenuous tests of democracy in the modern era.  If the Muslim Brotherhood does in fact become the largest party in a free and fair election, and if the MB’s ability to turn Egypt into an Islamic state is not checked by the army and a strong opposition, and if after all that the United States still decides not to intervene to protect its interests, then democracy will have been proven as something more than a purely virtual, symbolic authority in our estimation.

We will see shortly if Zizek was correct in his casual supposition.

I’ll leave you with this: the peculiarity of David's response when asked about the issues addressed in this post.  A visual artist whose primary medium is found objects, his only point of reference was a blog post displaying D.I.Y. helmets worn by revolutionaries on the streets of Cairo.  All in all, a much more fascinating summation of “radical” disconnect than I could here provide.

- C.T.