I've Heard Good Things

Cold Snap

Tonight I recorded an interview between ABC News Reporter Christiane Amanpour, ABC News Producer Andrew Morse and our team here at Facebook (Randi). It was supposed to be a Live interview, but we ran into a ton of difficulties Skyping from Egypt that will hopefully be worked out for tomorrow. 

Christiane spoke about how her interview with President Mubarak wasn’t an interview at all, it was a conversation. She spoke of his expressiveness. His extreme emotional state. He was fed up with public life. He was frustrated. In President Mubarak’s eyes he has put everything he could into his country. He’s convinced that if he were to step down before the upcoming election the nation would plunge into chaos. 

There have been quite a few articles written about how the lack of leadership in this movement will ultimately be its fatal flaw. In our nation, we have a presidential election every four years and we work hard to pick the better of  two options. For over 200 years we’ve developed a set of values that we expect our government to uphold. With each new election we evaluate between relatively subtle differences in opinion, but we rarely touch upon fundamental ideology: freedom of speech, press, assembly, trail by jury, no national religion, etc. We know these by heart because they’re what our nation is built upon. 

I don’t think I have a good grasp on what the Egyptian people want. I listened to Christiane. I hear ‘anti Mubarak’ and ‘pro Mubarak’. The only clear truth I see is that a large and dedicated portion of the nation want Mubarak gone. He has been in power for 30 years. The people seem to quite simply want a new ruler. Christiane said that a not-so-insignificant amount of the population was satisfied that he would step down in September. Clearly many more were not okay with that. 

I get this sense that here in America we expect this revolution to lead to a crazy upheaving of ideology. We assume that when the people of Egypt uprise looking for a new leader, that means they want a democracy. And a democracy must mean all these other things. There will be relative peace and free press and speech and thoughtful judges and separation of powers and no more religious head butting and all of these amazing things. 

I can’t help but think we might be wrong. Maybe the people of Egypt just wanted a new leader. Maybe 30 years was all they could take of one man. I like to think that all these other great things that come with electing a leader with a finite term will come to Egypt in time. Yet for some reason I don’t see that happening now. This week. This month. This year. I could be wrong, I hope I’m wrong. But hoping I’m wrong is about all I can do as these increasingly tense and violent events unfold.