GO EGYPT!

why do i hate it SO much when people post things on facebook like "go yemen go!" or "yeah egypt!", status updates cheering revolution? i guess i'm sympathetic to that in that repressive governments are bad and freedom of speech is good, etc. but there's something so sanctimonious and superficial about those kinds of things, something self congratulatory reminiscent of the way westerners like to believe twitter was central to the protests in iran after their election.

moreover, i think it's because a part of me thinks its just a general, indiscriminate love of "revolution." i think i think this because i feel that way myself, i get excited about things that upend the standard order of the news, catastrophes are wonderful to read about and i love when the numbers are high, higher, always more casualties, damages, homeless it's a perverse thing and i don't know how to explain it. but i feel like that same perversity might be at work when people have those status updates who have blind faith in "student protest," "youth uprisings" and assign them this undeniable good that they may not be worthy of. and in part i think loving those protests, those street movements is just a childish romance, a slightly more mature version of how a toddler loves when an earth mover savages the sidewalk, and how these people now dream of lighting things on fire and grabbing any reason to somehow upend things and run into the street. it's romantic and sexy and fun to upend things, may 68 had all the pretty girls after all. but i just wish they would admit that. at least i think so. maybe they just know a lot more than me and have substantive hopes for what all these "youths" might amount to in terms of better government.

i think they just want it to be like the last scene of the dreamers were they run out into the street and are ready to shout and wear a bandana and feel beautiful, idealistic solidarity. i think it's cute but irritating when it seems like they want to say it's substantive. revolution, if it really changes things, and isn't just bandana wearing and pretty girls, means blood and unhappiness and death and all sorts of things that aren't worth saying "go yemen!" for unless one is quite sure one knows what one is cheering FOR rather than just against, tearing up the sidewalk like that ecstatic toddler.