Fence sitting

Charlie Rose in his starched suits can be as irritating as he is brilliant, his series on The Brain is on my wish list of DVDs. However, he had a panel discussion on Libya and America's governmental/think tank/ advisories etc dithering on the what-to-do-about-Libya-situation that included Simon Weiseltier of The New Republic, whose writing I should read more often and have intentionally avoided. But tonight he was a voice on the wilderness who seemed to GET IT RIGHT. There indeed are exceptions in history when you set aside the common political paradigms because the situations at hand are so momentous that doing the right and moral thing can change the course of human history. I wrote those very words a few weeks ago to alot of hee haws that considered me misguided at best, but in fact other brainiacs are rethinking their concepts in this direction;
We are not witnessing the uprising of the islamic caliphate, we are seeing the effects of Western Education on young Middle Eastern students, whose parents spent every last centime to get them situated so they could find work and possibly escape from the despotic rulers they live under.
Never under estimate an education, but dont over estimate it either. Americans are way down on the literacy/math competency list below countries we cant even locate on a map; high school graduates have about a 9th grade reading average and entering college requires remedial work in the college so that students can just maintain their grades. In other words, the education we offer to foreign students to open their minds to other paths is the education not taken seriously in the land of the free, home of the brave.
Because this is not the islamic revolution as envisioned by Syed Qutb or Zawahiri and people are not mentioning an expiration date for Israel, rather requesting the demise of their own dictators, America which has underwritten for decades the concept of democracy as the Way for all People,the right to have a voice, to express one's self etc etc as a fundamental human right, it remains on our heads to get off the fence to assist it making history happen, successfully.

We are dithering as Libyans are dying. There is also very little English news as to what is actually going on in Egypt other than riots in Tahrir and Nasr City-the poor bourgeoise living in their Russian built apartments can look out their window balconies and see history in the making-I'm betting alot of families are being torn generationally by what's going on.

Either its all too much for American news managers to decide what to psot nightly or they think Americans cant stomach much more than wether Wisconsin is union busting and what that means for the rest of the country. My life changed via very belated unionizing where I worked, but we paid for job protection and the end of arbitrary management with pretty high union dues that were not voluntary. Unions have gone the way of all lingering despots after the intial thrill of overthrowing the power structure they replace. by installing new systems that create much the same institutional bloat with early retirement in many cases where employees are in their fifties and healthy, annual bonuses just for breathing and working, high pensions, annual COLA raises all expected by employees in contracts and written to be binding in many cases. Unionization began as a heroic means of protecting workers and turned into a means of creating a mediocrity of overpaid expectant employees in many cases, the educational system being a primary example in America.
So that we misunderstand the genuine expectation of young Middle Eastern students fed much the same literature, politics and ideas that have been presented to disinterested americans, is not too surprising. They believed the hype, we take it for granted and now are totally unprepared for what we created...the Golem of Prague comes to mind for some reason...

Simon Weseltier said the same without flying all over the place as I tend to do because my brain flit in fits of adrenaline these days that are so amazing, these times that we never thought would come to fruition, these times that even chabad said are here, the days of the Moshiach. If that is all too simplified for y'all...while this all appears to be a secular based movement free of religiosity, thereby safe for the Jews, nothing happens without the will and mercy of the Creator and needs to be seen within that context. So my constant reference to moral imperative is not from Philo 101, it is the understanding that as human beings in a now very small global community that can and does reach one another daily, to speak and be spoken with, we can affect great things with every gesture, even the single prayer said by one person in a solitary room, every act for good leads us on one road to a final destination.

Or as someone else said long ago, we can lead or be led...I pray that those people who make decisions can make some from their hearts and stop thinking things to death because every moment lost in contemplation about what to do or not means another Libyan, Egyptian, Yemeni, Iranian, Bahraini, Jordanian and ultimately Israeli's lives teeter on that fence.