A Message to My Fellow Citizens…

Folks,

I was all set to post about some techie stuff, but life happens. I heard the news today, oh-boy…

I am an American boy,  grown up in the '60s. It is interesting and inspiring, also troubling to see the deal going down in Egypt. I feel the resonance of some events in our history in the USA. A couple of them are surprising, even to myself.

Of course, my nation's founders had some experience with firing a tyrant, then soldering together a fragile democracy brimming with very opinionated folks of conflicting philosophies, different walks of life and station in society. Somehow, we went on to a place, two centuries later, to fire two of our own Presidents in short order, stop a horrible war, and threw a great party. Another was not so good.

The weird parallel that I see between the initial protest in Egypt is to the Woodstock Festival. The third biggest city on our continent, at the time, was a three day hoot for peace and music. That was Woodstock. It was entirely self organized by a bunch of mainly middle class kids without day jobs, no food nor even toilets at hand. Much fun had all, and nobody got hurt. Sounds like day one and two of the events in Cairo, but those good folks on those streets added a call for justice to the music.

But, the comparison continues. Those Woodstock kids went home and kept the party going, tho along a different path, and they did so with their moms at their side. We filled the streets in the old cities (old by American standards) and faced down two lunatics with atom bombs. It took about fours years from Woodstock to running Johnson, then that depressive maniac Nixon to ground; that is not a long time on the tide of history. Along that path, we stopped a war.

Then, there is Woodstock's terrible alter ego, Altamont. Here again is a preceding echo of the trouble in Cairo. Hired thugs, the Hell's Angels, came on the scene to "keep order". Those Angels, mainly veterans who did service to their nation in 'Nam, but many of them kick-ass criminals, trained killers by their service, were not a bona fide bulwark against chaos. Peace and love and healthy politics dissolved into murder.

Peace and polity fell swiftly into chaos and killing at that gig. The killing got done in the name of keeping order. Even hippies can screw up in such regard. Worse, what we do to our children by sending them to war was richly demonstrated right here on our own turf in December of '69.

Egypt, in the past two days, has seen its little Pharaoh, that fat little punk, Mubarack send out into the peaceful demonstration of Human fidelity his own hired thugs. They wield their sticks and throw their bombs. They make a fine mess of the party. The greatest pity, is that they torture their own who have been spared the sorry wages of war until they came to the streets for jobs, peace and justice.

Think about it, and what you might want to do in speaking to your neighbors, wherever you happen to be on this pale blue dot in the Void. 

S