Cross Posted at Legal Schnauzer
I was reading a recent article in Time magazine about the uprising in Egypt when several sentences stopped me in my tracks.
Reporter Fareed Zakaria was explaining that Egyptian society had spawned a fair amount of political activism through the ages, but that had largely stopped over the past 50 years or so. How did that happen? The answer presented images that were uncomfortably familiar.
With citizens in Wisconsin already taking to the streets to protest Republican heavy-handedness, this question comes to mind: Could Main Street USA start looking more and more like downtown Cairo?
From Zakaria's article in Time:
Ever since the late 1950s, the Egyptian regime has cracked down on its civil society, shutting down political parties, closing newspapers, jailing politicians, bribing judges and silencing intellectuals. Over the past three decades Egypt became a place where few serious books were written, universities were monitored, newspapers carefully followed a bland party line and people watched what they said in public.
As I read that, I couldn't help but think, "Good God, that sounds like America since the Bush crowd took over. It sure as heck sounds like life in Karl Rove's Alabama."
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