More Ramblings on Faith

I think I've pinpointed what it is that I can't deal with about religion in America. The entire thing has just reached such a level of excess that it isn't even religion anymore; it's purely an institution. You have mission trips that are valued to the point that it's a borderline modern day plenary indulgence. Evangelicals have a high rate of divorce (for a bit of irony, the lowest divorce rate is among the college-educated elite they typically scorn). Its public face is one that pickets funerals of dead soldiers, despises intellectualism, and has lost sight of what Christianity is.

My problem is that people do what they do because it provides them with a sense of self-satisfaction, a sort of holier-than-thou feeling about their faith and themselves by proxy. This is where I find myself loving Niebuhr even more simply because he condemned this sort of behavior. Their charity work serves a practical good that ought to be valued, but to think this makes you any better or holier in God's eyes is absurd. The thing that keeps drawing me back to Christianity is the bond it builds between people, not the sense of self-gratification I get out of being more faithful than those who aren't.

I'm living in a society that obsesses about public displays of faith. The zabeeb, the callus men develop after excessive praying, is popular here in Egypt. Women pray just as much but rarely have it. There are rumors that men use sandpaper to make the callus more prominent. Women in the 20th century rarely wore the hijab. It's a recent trend. And in Turkey, women don't want it allowed in public places because they fear their colleagues will guilt them into wearing it, just like what has happened here in Egypt. These trends aren't Egypt-specific. The fact that atheists are the least-trusted group in American society should make that apparent.

I want people to return to a style of faith that is more personal, that is about living the good life and drawing the satisfaction out of faith, not that you are holier than your neighbor. There needs to be a true return to genuine humility in service that the sensory overload megachurch and institutionalized religious orthodoxy cannot provide.

Post-Election Thoughts (Ikhwan Edition!)

Well, the elections have come and gone and they were relatively uneventful. They weren't particularly strange, and unless you lived in Shoubra or Giza, there was very little in way of activity. I didn't notice much of anything downtown other than the plethora of posters for Tagammu, which is Egypt's pseudo-communist party (one of which I took off the wall in front of my flat - might take some more, let me know if you want one). I think elections were more interesting in poorer districts and outside of the city where there was more controversy regarding electoral tactics and greater political mobilization.

The biggest news seems to be that the Ikhwan didn't win a single seat outright, losing the 88 seats they had gained in 2005. They are now pulling out of the runoff elections this coming weekend, which comes as little shock. The Brotherhood took a particularly big hit in the opposition community for not joining the el-Baradei-led boycott and pursuing their own agenda. Some have taken this as a sign of the Brotherhood's increasing irrelevancy, though I'm not entirely sure I'm willing to make that claim yet. They are in the midst of a sort of soul-searching following the departure of Mehdi Akef as Supreme Guide and no one, even within the organization, thought they would win a single seat this election. They still remain the only major organized opposition movement that hasn't been co-opted by the NDP. Granted, this slide into irrelevancy comes at an awkward time with the parliamentary elections having passed and presidential elections next year, though I don't see the long-term prospects changing for the Brotherhood. They are, and likely will remain, the dominant force in Egyptian opposition.

The Stresses of Cairo

Sorry it's been so long since last writing. Midterms and everything have wrapped up, and I just haven't really felt like writing for a bit.

In classical Arabic, al Qahirah (Cairo in Arabic) literally translates as "the victorious," in its more appealing sense. It is a city that has been continuously inhabited longer than any other location on earth, dating from the days of On and Memphis to Fustat up until today. Its relevance fluctuates, even within Egypt, but Cairo has always been one of the most important cities in the world. And more remarkable than anything else is its bizarre ability to persist in spite of the various absurdities that seem to govern its existence.

al Qahirah also translates as "the oppressor." Lately, this has felt very true. There have been so many strange contradictions that have really added a lot of stress to my life. Even though I've always noticed them, they've sort of lost their humor now that I've realized what their implications are for the society that couches them and for myself being trapped in it. The proximity of my departure probably spurs some of these sensations as well. There are two things in particular that have been really heavy on my mind: the extent of sexual repression in the Arab world and the bizarre tourist-Cairene relationship.

I never had some silly idea that Islam itself breeds terrorism here. I knew anti-Semitism would be an issue, but not one I would have to deal with or witness because it isn't culturally obvious daily. On the other hand, I have never seen a more sexually bizarre people than the Arabs. Egyptian life is incredibly family-centric, which probably has something to do with this. If someone isn't approved by the family, the marriage won't happen. Furthermore, dating really only happens here after someone's family member introduces the couple to each other, and yes, they are often cousins. That said, with the current generation of youth with their intermingling at school, this seems to be changing, and I do see younger people walking around the street together. However, for the most part, there is a very strict gender segregation in groups of friends, and they are usually either roving bands of young men looking for white women to harass or Egyptian women to talk to or groups of women looking for husbands.

I've come to realize that this has little, if anything to do with the repression of women in the society. While men do have a disgustingly misogynistic take on the roles of women, what is more significant and what in part creates this is the strict separation of genders in society and the sexual repression that exists within this context. I feel just as much pity for Arab men as I do women. They live in a very "look, even gawk, but don't touch" society where they will harass and grope women all they want, but that's largely because, frankly, they won't get anything more than that until they get married. Men here have this nutty idea that marriage is their first desire, and I don't even really know what women think on it. My roommate is currently getting text messages from an Arab man she mistakenly gave her number to that in the same sentence call her a "bitsh" for not texting him back and told her he loved her. Mind you, they talked for literally two minutes, and apparently this man knows he loves my roommate.

It is unnatural. A man's sex drive is peaking around the time he is 25. A female's most ripe age for child-rearing is around 18. There is a biological reason for these urges, and a society that resists them the way Egyptian culture does invites nothing but the problems we see highlighted constantly in Western media. I don't like that we've tried to define it within our terms, because the problem is so much deeper than gender repression. It has everything to do with the wholesale sexual repression of a society by its culture, which enables the segregation of men and women and thus allows the two to be treated as different groups in society.

The tourist-Egyptian relationship can be really bizarre sometimes. In general, I love Egyptians. In spite of our various communication barriers (slang being by far the biggest one), most Egyptians thoroughly enjoy Americans and are madly in love with the idea of America. While some will talk to you on the street telling you they have a cousin in Minnesota (universally, Minnesota. There is no other state they mention) and they have a business card to give you, only to attempt to sell you things, the vast majority are just glad to talk to you and hear about how you are doing, where you are from, and how you like Egypt. The most commonly heard phrase on the streets of Cairo by a clear margin is "welcome to Egypt!" These are the Egyptians I love.

There are also those that are willing to take advantage of the lack of structure in the society to screw over tourists. I recommend anyone that comes here to have a good idea of what they are doing before they do or have someone to show them around. Otherwise you'll risk paying an arm and a leg for something that you never should pay for. The other night I went with Phil, Kiki, and Ben to an Indian restaurant in Zamalek, an island in the middle of the Nile. A cab ride from Zamalek to Downtown on a normal metered cab costs 7 pounds. I flagged down a cab on the way back, got in, and the guy asked me if I wanted to use the meter. I was a bit of a bonehead and said yes. If a cabbie has a meter and is going a short distance, they will drive you in circles to drive up the rate, which he did. We could have gone straight across the island to the 6th of October bridge and from there straight to Downtown. Instead, he drove all the way to the bottom of the island, back up, and then across the bridge. I knew this, but I didn't anticipate paying more than ten pounds. We arrived at our desired location, and from my vantage point in the front seat relative to the low-sitting meter, it looked like 11 and a half LE, which is expensive, but I wasn't going to argue. When I give the driver 12 pounds, he looks at me like I'm crazy and asks for 17. I sure as hell knew that wasn't a 17 pound cab ride, so I gave him the money and walked away (standard practice when you know you're getting screwed). The guy gets out of the cab and starts walking toward me, screaming for his five pounds. I yelled back, and fought the guy down. It probably helped that there was a cop down the street, but there was no way in hell that man was going to get my pound.

Looking back on the incident, it seemed pretty ridiculous. I felt bad when I realized the meter had said 17 instead of 11, but the guy deliberately screwed us in driving a long way. I threw a fit over one dollar, in public. So when I put it down like that, it sounds like the stuff nightmares are made of. I remember when Yury, my real estate agent, would do the same thing, and how it was awkward to watch because I didn't want to be associated with his diatribe. But after having lived here for a while, thinking in terms of LE, and feeling less like a tourist and more of a resident, there is nothing in the world I have come to hate more than when people try screwing me, no matter how much I think something should cost. It has become a matter of principle. I honestly hope the trend keeps itself in the US, because I didn't stand up for myself enough in the states. It's funny, though. If someone tried doing this to me in the states, I would freak out on principle, even if it was over a marginal amount of change. It has a lot to do, I think, with the sensation that the country is somehow yours, and you are thus entitled to be treated as anyone else in it. I get that feeling here, and it is in a really weird way home. I'll be glad to get home, but I'll miss Cairo a lot.

Palestine and Anti-Semitism

I'm generally really, really reluctant to make any sort of commentary on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Arguing about it is like arguing about moral issues, where there is very, very little ground for compromise because of the ideological underpinning of both sides. I consider it a policy issue, and do not consider myself pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian. The concept of being pro-either side is fairly repugnant to me, since the two notions are convoluted and add to the bipolarity of the debate. But one thing that has really troubled me since being here are the numerous, blatant examples of anti-Semitism I've seen within Egypt, and more within the broader Arab world.

I walk to school every day and pass a few booksellers on the side of the road. In addition to copies of the Qur'an, a few technical know-how guidebooks, the occasional children's book or translation of a popular American novel, and a book or two about Che Guevara or a famous figure in Egyptian history, nearly every bookstand has a copy of Mein Kampf or The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Arab world is one of the few places in which being anti-Semitic is a state-endorsed activity. I do understand the base logic behind this: Israel has identified itself as a Jewish state, Arabs hate Israel and what it has done to the Arab sense of self, thus Arabs hate Jews (of course, this is absolutely not universal, and I speak more about social elites than your average person). It's a weird transitive property application in real life. Every Egyptian I ever talk to about politics will say, "I do not like your country's politics, but I love Americans." They are very, very good at delineating between politics and a people. However, I don't sense this at all when they speak about Israel. It has always been identified as the Jewish state, and thus people dislike Jews. People don't talk about actions by Israelis in non-academic contexts; they talk about acts by "the Jewish." This identification has very, very dire implications for the long-term health of Arab-Israeli relations.

Israel and Yemen probably have some pretty solid strategic interests in common, particularly as far as their navies are concerned in way of protecting access to crucial sea lanes. One would think that this might be enough to forge at the very least a modicum of cooperation. However, Yemen recently disbanded its chess team after allegations that it played a match against Israel's team. A chess match. This isn't mind-bending stuff, folks. Even during the Cold War the US and Russia played chess matches, and that was a globe-consuming conflict. This conflict is so entrenched in the Arab social elite psyche that I don't know what it will take to move past it, and I don't know that finally recognizing Palestine will do this.

Let's suppose there is an ideal situation, where Israel returns to its pre-1967 borders, ends all settlements, and maybe even adopts a formal constitution protecting the rights of its Arab minorities. The animosity between Israel and Palestine runs so deep at this point that the formation of the Palestinian state isn't going to create some beautiful, friendly alliance between Israel and the Arabs. Anti-Semitism will persist, and anti-Arabism within Israel will persist as well (though Israel has a far better track record in way of non-discrimination law). At this point, anti-Semitism is an institution that will merely propagate itself. Part of a peace deal between Israel and Palestine isn't going to be, "We'll give you land if you stop hating us."

As long as political movements in Palestine and Israel persist to become elected on the grounds of resistance or protection of ethnic interests, these groups will persist in mobilizing public opinion against the other so as to legitimize their underlying ideology and validate their own existence. This isn't going to do peace any favors, let alone mutual understanding.

Pre-Election Thoughts

While there are hugely important elections coming up soon in the United States, parliamentary elections are right around the corner here as well. Slated for November 28, the elections exist essentially to reinforce the power of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) via the creation of a sham legislature. While the legislature constitutionally has some power, the executive typically promulgates vast majority of legislation, and even that which is passed by the legislature is typically a simple rubber stamp of a preexisting NDP policy.

Taking this into account, why do we care about Egyptian elections? Why not boycott them, like Muhammad Baradei has chosen to do? There are two sides to the story for both the state and party itself. First and foremost for the state, elections serve as a sort of safety valve for dictatorial regimes. In times of stress, such as those in the late 1980s in Jordan or in between 1990 and 1994 in Yemen, regimes undertook a moderate loosening of their typically rigid stance on political parties and parliamentary authority in general and allowed more parties to run, enabling the IAF in Jordan and Islah in Yemen to attain more in way of political sway. This sort of stalled liberalization enables regimes to tout the changes they have made in recent years while denying access to the political process to peripheral movements (or, in the case of Yemen, using the election to make winning parties dependent on the state for relevancy). In the case of Egypt, parties such as Wafd, Tagammu', or Ayman Nour's al-Ghad have accept a rather non-confrontational role relative to that which we typically assign to the Muslim Brotherhood here in Egypt. These parties continually question the actions of the NDP, though they do not put forward many candidates in elections out of fear of losing their status as a recognized party (an understandable fear when these parties lack the grassroots organization the Ikhwan possesses). In addition to serving as a safety valve, elections serve as a means by which the state can provide a sort of moral legitimacy to policy. Even though the executive essentially rules by decree, the parliament still serves as a means by which patronage is disbursed to those fortunate enough to receive it among the general population and thus assure continued elite support for the regime.

So taking into account the relative inefficacy of the parliament and the risks posed by running for office, why participate in the first place? For many parties, past decisions to boycott have led to borderline irrelevance within Egyptian political discourse. No one considers al-Ghad to be the default opposition in spite of Ayman Nour's relatively successful run (meaning he obtained 7% of the vote) against Hosni Mubarak for the office of the presidency (and subsequent jailing on trumped-up charges) in 2005. The dichotomy people talk about is the NDP versus the Society of Muslim Brothers. In the 2005 parliamentary elections, the Ikwan won a shocking 88 seats in the parliament, the most won by an opposition in years, and far more than the NDP wanted the opposition to maintain. The Ikhwan is not allowed to run as an official party; all of their candidates must register as independents, which requires them to obtain 250 signatures from members of the People's Assembly (parliament), Shura Council, and various municipal councils. In spite of this, likely electoral fraud, voter intimidation, poll access denial, and mass arrests leading up to and following the election, the Ikhwan performed far beyond expectations. While limited in their ability to do anything in the People's Assembly, it gave them an element of respectability even in Western arenas they did not have previously and made them a focal point for opposition to the regime. If these are the types of benefits one could accrue from performing, why not run?

Personally, I never expected to be in favor of boycotting elections, though I increasingly find myself seeing it as a wise decision for political parties. For most movements, it allows them to avoid the massive arrests most movements are subjected to before elections. This year, there is a fairly wide-held anticipation that this year's crackdown will be particularly brutal, and 12 were killed and 500 injured on election day alone in 2005. Arrests have begun, communications are becoming far more restricted, and opposition advertisements are hard to find in spite of the prevalence of NDP posters advertising their candidates strewn across Cairo and cities around the country (I've never seen as many political advertisements as I did in Marsa Matrouh). Most people I have talked to have said this seems worse than in years past, though I obviously have no way to verify this based on my limited time here. So political movements can guarantee that they can live to fight another day rather than fight for a post in a toothless parliament and maybe hope to gain some of the international or grassroots support necessary to their survival on Egypt's highly controlled political scene. Furthermore, an election in which the NDP wins 518 out of 518 seats would look far worse to the international community than one in which a minority party actually wins a sizable chunk of the electorate. It could draw international attention to Egypt's political flaws in a way even a legitimate parliamentary election never could. Whether or not it actually would is questionable at best, though when we're thinking on the margins in terms of what is a preferable choice between a crackdown and international involvement, the latter seems more beneficial in my eyes.

One way or another, a lot of attention will be drawn onto the Emergency Law this year. The Emergency Law is a clause of the Constitution that can be activated in the case of a threat to the state. Activated in 1981 following the assassination of Anwar Sadat and still active today, the Emergency Law essentially reemphasizes preexisting restrictions on freedom of speech and assembly and provides for a broader range of police activity. A copy of it can be found here (and one of the Constitution here). Many have called for its repeal since its activation in the '80s, though nothing has happened or is likely to happen in the near future. It is incredibly easy to focus in on the Emergency Law as the source of many of Egypt's problems. But what worries me about such activities is their tendency to idealize the pre-1981 status of Egyptian political culture. While Sadat moderately liberalized society during his reign, Egypt was by no means a competitive democracy. It was a one-party state in which just as much legislature was passed via the executive, where the courts were just as dependent on the executive for authority, and in which political crackdowns were just as likely to occur. Focusing on the Emergency Law ignores the crucial issues that exist within Egyptian legal culture and absolutely must be fixed. Much of what the Emergency Law allows for is already on the books, and it will take far, far more than winning a parliamentary election and somehow miraculously repealing the Emergency Law to fix Egyptian government.

For a really, really solid primer on the 2010 elections, 2011 presidential election, and background on Egyptian government, I strongly encourage you all to check out the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's briefing on the elections. It's a quick and dirty read that will leave you pretty fluent in Egyptian political culture upon reading it.

I'm entering midterms, so this may be my last post for a little while, though I'll hopefully have a lot more to blog about next week when folks from AU start visiting. I haven't explored anywhere near as much of Cairo as I would like to, and I'll have a great excuse to go out when I have people to show around. So expect a lot more travel blog-esque posts in the near future instead of all of this heavy stuff :)

My Steady Drift Toward Calvinism

I've been in the midst of a bit of a theological crisis since arriving here, where I've been drifting all over the board. It's been a little bizarre. I've always considered myself a mild Calvinist insofar as it has made logical sense to me that God would have some idea of who was and wasn't "saved." If you accept He is omniscient, it's about the only conclusion that makes any sense. However, since arriving in Egypt I've found myself more sympathetic to Calvinist notions of sin, which I didn't expect in the least.

I've read quite a bit of Reinhold Niebuhr since arriving. For those unfamiliar, he is the one who came up with the serenity prayer that is displayed prominently in many hospitals around the country nowadays. I find him fascinating as an intellectual because of the radical changes he made within his belief systems over the course of his life. He went from a communist to a fervent supporter of Israel and the American use of power abroad, which has mirrored (though to a far greater extent) my own shift from far left to moderate left (though with moderately hawkish foreign policy views), so I feel an element of kinship with him in that regard. I started with reading The Irony of American History, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It challenged the notion of American exceptionalism, which I've always had my doubts about, and argued that it can be outrightly dangerous to the maintenance of American power. But on a personal level, Niebuhr has had a profound effect on my beliefs about mankind.

At least since arriving at college, I've been very distrustful of notions that assume humans will act with anyone in mind but themselves. I've moved from being sympathetic to the Lockean tabula rasa view of mankind, which states man is only corrupted by society, not innately, to believing there is something fundamentally "wrong" with mankind. Fromme identifies the fundamental struggle of mankind as being rooted in the realization all men experience that there is a dichotomy between the mind and instinct that causes them to ponder their existence in a way no other species does. Our inability to reconcile our human and animal natures complicates our lives beyond all compare and makes it near-impossible to find grounding in the real world. Having personally struggled with this disconnect between my mind and the reality that surrounds it, I tend to be sympathetic to Fromme's view. And deriving from this is the notion that the only way I can mentally reconcile these twin natures of man is via something that exists outside the self, whether it be God or a sense of purpose. In spite of my professed faith, I do not feel as though I have bridged this gap and still feel a disconnect between myself and the world around me. Thus, I have accepted the notion of "religion," again in Fromme's sense that religion constitutes devotion to something outside the self that may not be divine and may not require faith, as a fundamental facet of my existence.

This Frommean notion of religion has combined with the classical Calvinist notion of man's nature that has led me to believe in God more strongly than before. I believe man is evil, though not always intentionally, and not always in a way that is "evil" in the sense we traditionally think about it. Lars Svendsen argues in A Philosophy of Evil that because of events like the Holocaust, we are prone to differentiating between "bad" and "evil" so as to absolve ourselves of responsibility for our actions. While not advocating a black-and-white perspective on evil (in fact, doing the opposite), Svendsen seeks to provide us a context in which we can discuss the evils of daily life. By accepting that I can behave evilly, I can thus seek to expunge said evil from my life by acknowledging it for what it is and struggling against it. This notion I do not dispute at all and have fully accepted it as a part of my daily life.

What I am currently struggling with is Niebuhr's extension of this acceptance of evil, that being that man is fundamentally evil and incapable of good. Niebuhr does not argue as Calvin did that man is incapable of good acts. Niebuhr instead argues that man can perform good acts, though these actions lead to pride, which is the loftiest of sins. Thus, even acts of charity can devolve into sin when they lead to excessive self-confidence, which he argues they inevitably do. While I do not necessarily think on the individual level these actions lead to pride, within institutions they can evolve into a sort of culture that is dangerous. This is alluded to by Mearsheimer in The Tragedy of Great Power Politics and the plethora of critiques of empire. A sense of exceptionalism, which is developed in any organization that feels it is doing a particularly divine good within the world, leads to decline and immorality. Thus, institutions are incapable of true moral good (in the long-run). Human existence is thus rendered brutal, and only via God can true morality be attained, and even then not necessarily (or at all) in daily life. God is thus solely a means to salvation in this sense. While I absolutely agree with Niebuhr's critique of hubris, I do not yet know if I believe that institutions cannot do any good in the moral sense of the word, and even if I accept this notion, if I believe institutions are incapable of practical good.

This blog post came out of nowhere and is basically just me sorting out thoughts on a topic I'll probably never sort out and will probably think differently about tomorrow. So in sum, I have no idea whether or not I believe good men must gird themselves against evil at every turn, perhaps committing evil to do so, or whether or not man himself is fundamentally evil. I suppose I'll have a better idea when I finish up Moral Man and Immoral Society.

The Media, the "New Right", and Democracy

The rise of the Tea Party has come about via the massive mobilization of conservative elements in American society in reaction to perceived "attacks on democracy." What I find most ironic about the candidates themselves is how, well, undemocratic their campaigns have been.

In my mind, the essence of a competitive campaign is the full scrutiny of all aspects of the lives and views of candidates. Yes, the media will typically rip candidates to shreds, some more than others. And yes, they will often make issues where there are none in the interest of ratings. The media certainly has no interest beyond making people watch. However, that interest, just as many other selfish acts, can have positive externalities. Having lived in a repressive government for a while now, I've come to understand how important the media is just for keeping public officials honest. And I've seen far too many candidates in this election foreswear the media so that they might improve their odds of election.

What got me thinking about this subject (and conveniently doubles as an example) was an interview question posed to Sarah Palin about Jewish settlement in Palestine. Palin provided her ardent support (rather blandly) for settlements, arguing that because the Jewish population was expanding they ought to settle. When asked if this support extended onto settlements in Palestinian territory, she responded, "I believe that the Jewish settlements should be allowed to expand." While she is implying that yes, she believes this extends into Palestinian territory, what she fails to do is say as much. It reflects a fundamental unwillingness to deal with the consequences, good or bad, of her desired actions. It is reflective of her broader attacks on the "lamestream media" who have skewered her time and time again. If the media were ripping her to shreds unjustly, as happened to Shirley Sherrod, I would be nothing but sympathetic to her cause. But faulting the media for your inability to name a newspaper is just stupid.

This extends to much of the rest of the "new right." Sharron Angle, Christine O'Donnell, and now Joe Miller refuse to show up on any national media. Angle is now known for bragging about her ability to fundraise by appearing on friendly media. And I can't sit here and claim she's wrong for that. She's running a campaign, and she must do what she needs to do to win. But to pretend that she's a vanguard of some democratic revolution, as the Tea Party is wont to do, is absurd. Limiting her exposure criticism will help her poll numbers, but it is remarkably autocratic for a "champion of liberty."

This sort of behavior is indicative of the ideological demagoguery that terrifies me about the Tea Party. We sit here and buy into the absurd slogans they use to typify their campaigns and don't even stop to ask if what they are calling for is feasible or even healthy for our nation. It makes me increasingly buy into Niebuhr's thesis in Moral Man and Immoral Society: human collectives are brutal, and only via individual morality can social immorality be overcome.

Siwa

Sorry I haven't been updating regularly; my life has been pretty exciting of late, mostly with travel, fortunately.

I had most of this past week off due to Armed Forces Day, a celebration of the Egyptian "victory" over Israel during the Yom Kippur War, about which I'll write later. But long story short, I had time to go elsewhere for a while. John (my roommate), Phil (my roommate from AU), and I went to Siwa Oasis near the Libyan border, which is a city with some fascinating history and culture. I'll give a rundown of our trip within the context of its history, just because it's so unique in the history of the rest of the country.

We arrived on Wednesday night, where we were greeted by numerous youth driving donkey carts offering to take us to our hotels. They're all in all a really friendly bunch, and Siwis don't try to rip you off like Cairenes do from time to time, which is a nice change of pace. But we ended up getting hooked up with a guy named Osman who was incredibly helpful and ended up being a constant presence in our two-day trip. After getting something to eat, we decided to tool around downtown and ended up exploring Shali, a massive fortress at the center of the city.

Shali is an imposing monument to old-style architecture that exists solely as its environment demands. Constructed sometime in the 13th century, it is a massive fort composed of salt bricks, most of which were destroyed during a three-day rainstorm in 1926. There was a sign at the base of the monument that showed what it looked like in its prime, and it looks much more like the old Yemeni skyscrapers at Shibam, which were built with mud, than the massive limestone edifices of Cairo. The ruins themselves are pretty breathtaking and offer an amazing view of the city. Rare for a city, the view at night is far less impressive than that during the day when you can see the oasis in all of its leafy glory.

The next day we started early at the Cleopatra Spring. It's a clear cold-water spring that's pretty popular with the locals just east of the city near where the original Siwa settlement was in Aghurmi. It was a really refreshing way to get the day started before we drove up the road to the ruins of the Temple of Umm Ubaydah, an old temple to the Egyptian god Amun. All that remains today are a few columns and (what I presume were) graves just off the road, though the remarkably well-preserved inscriptions left on the main column that stands above the rest are worth checking out. We next went to the most historical icon in Siwa, the Temple of the Oracle.

The temple likely dates to the 26th Dynasty, which is the last native dynasty of Pharaohs to rule Egypt before the Persian conquest in 525 BC. The premise of the oracle, which was supposedly housed within the temple, was that an individual who resided within constituted a physical connection between worshippers and the divine. In this case, the oracle was to Amun, the chief deity during the 26th Dynasty. The temple clearly had such significance that Cambyses II, the son of Cyrus the Great of Persia, sent a 50,000 man-strong army to take the Oracle so that he might validate his rule among the Egyptian populace, only to have the army get lost somewhere in the Great Sand Sea, the remains of which have never been found. Alexander the Great is known to have traveled to the Oracle presumably the similarly legitimize his authority within Egypt, though without conquest in mind. The top of the temple had some absolutely gorgeous views of the surrounding area, including the town of Siwa itself and the Great Sand Sea stretching past that.

Following the Oracle we rode to Gebel al-Mawta, or the Mountain of Death. This is a massive ancient funerary complex built into the side of a mountain overlooking the city. The most remarkable feature here are the well-preserved paintings within several of the tombs. While there are graves all over the mountain, many that date back to the Pharaonic era have some incredible full-color paintings that date back over two and a half millennia. The chance to see these was one of the most exciting parts of the trip for me, just given my lifelong fascination with Ancient Egypt. Seeing things in full color instead of as ruins mobbed with tourists made things feel a lot more real and really gave me a feel for how amazing it was to witness something like this that has been preserved for so long.

Just as Shali and the Oracle, Gebel al-Mawta had some amazing views of the rest of the oasis. It was here I realized how mind-blowingly isolated Siwa really is; it is five hours away from the next city, smack in the middle of some of the most isolated terrain in the world. I've really never seen anything like it before. It's five hours away from anything else, and to get out of the city by any road other than the main road to Marsa Matrouh you have to take a 4x4 into the desert, which we did after Gebel al-Mawta.

The Great Sand Sea was one of the most amazing experience I've had in my life. The sheer sense of isolation one has when looking around and seeing nothing but mountains of sand is awe-inspiring and there aren't many places in the world that can replicate that feeling. It's absolutely gorgeous. The chance to see the sun set over some of the larger dunes is something I'll always be grateful for and think of when I think back on my time here.

I had the chance to sandboard, which was a lot of fun. You get some serious speed going down dunes. It's really wild. We drove around the desert in a 4x4 for a good while, driving up and down dunes. The physics of driving in sand are really bizarre. For instance, we were able to drive at a good clip down a slope of around 60 degrees with no difficulty (though with much terrified screaming from those who accompanied us). I couldn't really figure out why it would be any different from concrete in that particular instance, and my lack of knowledge of anything that requires math beyond a fifth grade level makes me reluctant to comment. But whatever; it was really, really cool. We stopped at cold and hot springs throughout the desert. These are scattered throughout the area, and are incredibly refreshing. To be in water that won't give you bilharzia is a gift I've come to treasure in my time here. Following these, we raced to see the sunset I described earlier and started a fire so that we could make some Siwi tea, which is a reddish tea that has a flavor different from any I've had. You can apparently get some in town for 15 LE, though I blanked on doing this and missed a good opportunity for good tea as a result.

That night we spent most of the time at an 'ahwa smoking sheesha and drinking tea and took it pretty easy. The next day we stopped in Marsa Matrouh for a little while so we could swim in the Mediterranean. The water was gorgeous and pretty warm, and the beach was dead since tourist season is over. So it was a really refreshing break to what would otherwise have been an incredibly long busride.

I returned mosquito-bitten, sunburned, and really tired. But it was all really worth it, and I can't recommend making the trip out to Siwa enough. It's gorgeous and the type of place that you can't find anywhere else.

Nasser, Sadat, and ECON-100

I was sitting in my Egyptian Government class the other day and we got into a conversation about whether or not Sadat or Nasser's economic policies made more sense. Just as a bit of background, when Nasser came to power, his focus was on endogenous growth with a heavy emphasis on developing native industry, raising tariffs to protect said infant industries, socializing education and healthcare, subsidizing basics such as bread, and capping wealth at 15,000 LE per year. Sadat removed much of this in his infitah (Open Door) policies, in which he sought to attract western and Gulf investment by removing many of Nasser's socialized policies. Anyway, we established that the two were equally tyrannical and both failed to establish crucial institutions that would depersonalize their rule, so the only real difference became their economies and foreign policies. Much of my class as well as my professor came down on Nasser's side, and I found myself as one of the few Sadat warriors.

Sadat is an incredibly touchy subject here. On the one hand, he restored Arab honor in initiating the 1973 Yom Kippur War, in which Egypt regained Sinai from the Israelis and, while they lost militarily, they dispelled the myth of Israeli invincibility and forced the Israelis to the bargaining table, making it a strategic victory for Arab nations. The day the war started, October 6th, has its own holiday over here. On the other hand, Sadat repealed many of the policies that made Nasser popular. Furthermore, the gap between rich and poor grew exponentially under his rule. But most controversial is his peace agreement with Israel. Most Egyptians were incredibly excited about the beginning of negotiations. Most Egyptian families had lost a son to one of the myriad wars the two nations had engaged in over the previous twenty years. They were tired of war. But most had high expectations of a more equal settlement with Israel that would more thoroughly address the Palestinian question and would include other Arab states. Instead, the agreement came off as a waste on Nasser's part in which he normalized relations with Israel and sacrificed the Arab cause in the name of getting back Sinai. As a result, the Camp David Accords aren't a terribly popular subject here, and they ultimately cost Sadat his life in 1981 when takfiri extremists assassinated him. So taking all of these emotions into account, my defense of a touchy subject reminded me of the fact that while in America I can be pretty far left, when I'm here discussing foreign policy or economics, I'm a full-on neocon relatively speaking.

I felt as though I could have summarized the debate in a statement made by one girl, an American, regarding Sadat's liberalization policies: "It's been proven that the free market works well in the short term, but isn't good for long-term growth." Besides flying in the face of high school-level economic theory and the course of history itself, I was awed by the fact that most people seemed to agree with this blatant fallacy. At least in the development of European industrial economies, the typical plan has been rampant protectionism in the short term that defends infant industries (much as Nasser did), followed by a long-term liberalization plan that opens the industry up to market forces, though allows for more outside consumption and investment, so in other words, the complete opposite of what this girl said. What it ultimately came down to in the end was a clash of values. I argued that Sadat did not liberalize enough, as evidenced by how complicated it is to start a business in the country, how much of the economy here is underground, and how hard it is for foreigners to invest and make money here. Many people responded in arguing that well, this didn't happen, so we can't judge him based on that. Duh. But where we disagree is whether or not liberalization ought to have been pursued in the first place. I'm of the school of thought where I would argue Nasser did the right thing in protecting his industries in the early going, but was wrong to restrict investment and capital gains. His redistributive policies made Egypt far less attractive to investors, who would fear that their wealth could simply be co-opted by the government for its own ends. Sadat did little to correct the institutional failures of Nasser's regime, though opening the door to outside investment was necessary. Egypt could not sustain itself with the sorts of subsidies it was implementing, and subsidized housing still affects the way Cairo has developed. There is no reason for landowners to renovate properties simply because it will cost more to do that than they can make off of rent, so the city just constantly sprawls outward as older sections of the city fall into disrepair.

By no means to I consider myself a disciple of the free market. I think it has plenty of shortcomings that aren't acknowledged enough in American economic discourse, namely in regards to how the economy interacts with the state and when it ought to take into account higher moral issues. I find the notion that the market is an end in itself is beyond silly. But the other end of the spectrum is absurd, and in the end, both ends are devoted more to the ideology itself than to serving the broader system of which they are a part.

The "Pledge to America"

I didn't really do anything exciting this past week, so I'm going to go off on a tangent here and write about American politics.

This past week, the GOP released their "Pledge to America." The text outlines their legislative priorities for 2010 and presumably beyond, which include repealing healthcare, cutting spending, and "restoring the Constitution" to government in America. All of these issues I find hilarious, for one overarching reason and a plethora of individual issues with the plans themselves.

First and foremost, it is vital to keep in mind that Republicans are an incredibly angry bunch right now. This anger allows them to bandy about silly tag words like "the Constitution" and "fiscal irresponsibility" as if absurd notions such as "common sense" provide a sound means for government, the elderly and military are immune from spending cuts, and the Constitution requires no interpretation whatsoever. And while this is true, I see a far greater issue with the platform: its reflection of a lack of desire to actually do anything.

By no stretch of the imagination do I consider myself a party hack. I find the Democrats in Congress to be morally spineless and completely and totally unable to stand up for the moral issues that, to me, made the party appealing in the first place. But I do see one fundamental difference in the way the Republican and Democratic parties are organized. The Democrats have stood for a broad series of concepts, namely equality of opportunity and under the law, educational reform and consolidation, environmental awareness, and consumer protection to varying degrees throughout history. This makes them (in my mind, unfortunately) far less likely to pursue vindictive legislative policies once made the dominant party and makes it far harder for them to get work done, as they are not united around a series of legislative objectives but broader conceptual approaches to issues. However, this allows them to actually get things done.

On the other hand, the Republicans run on a series of points, as they have done since the Contract with America. These legislative objectives allow the party to behave in a far more cohesive manner. However, it also provides them with what I see as an immense electoral scam that can cover their inaction within the legislature. Let's take Roe v. Wade into consideration. Candidates such as the much-beloved Christine O'Donnell of Delaware love to campaign on platforms that will restrict abortion even in cases of rape or incest. Lord knows this will never happen. What it essentially comes down to is that there is an acknowledged social implication to restricting abortion too heavily, and while you can make it as difficult as possible to get an abortion to puff up your legislative resume, no one will ever be able to restrict it entirely at a federal level. No one can ever build up the political capital sufficient to overturn Roe except for in hard-right states. So why has it not just been accepted as something far more controversial, the Civil Rights Act, was in the 1960s? There wasn't a set block of people that opposed the Civil Rights Act. Contrast this to Roe, whose detractors are primarily Catholics and evangelicals that can be easily mobilized during elections. What happens when you overturn Roe? All of a sudden Catholics and evangelicals might be a little more interested in Democratic policies like social welfare instead of Republican small government strategies. At best they don't have a hugely compelling reason like abortion that drives them to the polls in droves as it did in 2002 and 2004, and at worst, they start thinking about voting Democratic. It is an attempt at consolidating an electoral bloc, and nothing more. To elected officials, the costs far outweigh the benefits.

I view the "Pledge to America" in the same way as I view Republican tactics with Roe, though I at least admire the genius of Republican tactics with Roe in a way I cannot with the "Pledge to America," as they are sacrificing their commitment to hugely important issues like deficit reduction at the altar of electoral politics. The plan calls for cuts to discretionary spending across the board. Let's break this down here. In the FY2009 budget, defense, interest payments on debt, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, TARP, and miscellaneous non-discretionary spending constituted 88% of the national budget. This leaves 12% of the budget that the Republicans are interested in cutting. Break this down a little further, and taking into account Republican desires to keep Bush-era tax cuts alive, and I don't see much debt reduction here. It's a charade meant to draw out fiscally conservative voters. No one is advocating meaningful plans for making cuts to Social Security, Medicare, or other entitlement programs geared toward our elderly, who are, harsh as it is to say it, the least productive segment of our population. They shit their Depends every time someone says anything about adjusting the way in which or to whom Social Security payments are disbursed and politicians really love catering to that. While I hated many of Bush's policies, I at least admire him for having the moral fortitude to push for more controversial things like revamping Social Security. If only John Boehner was worried about more than his disgusting orange tan we might be getting somewhere and dare I say it, I would consider voting Republican.

Thoughts On The Veil

Well, seeing as how it's everywhere, I figured it might be an apt time to provide my bit on the veil. First, I want to make a distinction. There is a lot of diversity to what is referred to as "the veil," and it often gets convoluted. What you see the most is the hijab, that being the headscarf that has a lot of diversity in way of design and color and can be worn with most anything. For the purpose of ease, I won't be including the burqa, which is more of a South Asian phenomenon that you never see in Egypt. So with that taken into account, the only other thing I'll be looking at is the niqab, which is the facial covering that is quite common in more conservative families here.

This past weekend I went to Fayoum, a town about two hours south of Cairo that has a large salt water lake where you can actually swim without getting parasites (!). Besides the Hawara Pyramid and Lake Qarun, Fayoum is known for producing about half of the terrorists involved in the mass slaughter of 63 tourists in Luxor in 1997. I had a police escort the entire time I was there, and many who stay overnight are not allowed to leave their rooms without police (for the record I had no trouble there, because it was a weekend and Fayoum is a favored weekend destination for Cairenes). Personally I found the whole thing excessive and merely a means to protect Egypt's hugely important tourist industry, but the point is that Fayoum's highly religious population has a reputation.

At Lake Qarun, I was shocked by the number of niqabs I saw. Modesty is certainly valued there (I swam with my t-shirt on), but I never expected to see women swimming in full niqab. This admittedly made me feel a little uncomfortable. I live in a country where I can walk down the street with no fear of harassment (which is disgustingly common here), wearing nearly whatever I want, with no repercussions. In contrast, on a day at the beach that was easily 95 degrees Fahrenheit, women were outside in all black cloaks with their faces covered - swimming. It was funny on one level insofar as women have not let this restrict them in any way.

However, I find myself agreeing entirely with Blake Hounshell's recent piece on France's so-called "burqa ban." While it may be uncomfortable, it cannot be banned. It's important to keep two things in mind here: women do have an element of choice in wearing the veil. It is not compulsory, and while you might get more stares walking down the street, people will likely assume you are a Copt or a foreigner and not give it a second thought. In fact, one of Egypt's most treasured national icons, Hoda Shaarawy, is famous for spurning the veil in a dramatic display as early as 1919. And while there is a social expectation that women will dress modestly, there is a similar expectation for men. At the beach, many men wore pants while swimming, and I am yet to see an Egyptian wearing shorts. It just isn't as apparent because men have more choice with what they wear as a means of expressing conservative values (jeans, t-shirts, etc., all of which women can wear).

Just as my experience at the beach made me feel, Hounshell points out that he is a little uncomfortable when he sees a man walking down the street wearing an Armani Exchange t-shirt and Diesel jeans with a woman in full niqab in tow. The niqab is increasingly popular in a country that strives to prove its religious devotion and does not seem to be going away any time soon. I can't say I would be mourning the loss of the niqab if globalization destroyed the trend.

All this being said, I vehemently disagree with France's ban on principle. I resent the notion that one can restrict something so simple as what someone wears. France has assigned a meaning to the veil (backwardness) that may have nothing to do with the reasons why a woman may chose to do so. Many women choose to do so independently of outside forces other than their religion. For these reasons, it is not the place of the state to decide the meaning of religious objects of this sort, especially ones with as complicated a history and range of purposes as the veil. Society and the free market can do this well enough, and they don't need state influence to do it for them. Women do have voices, and it is demeaning and flat-out untrue to tell them that they cannot speak for themselves. Women here can vote, which is more than African Americans in the 1960s could say. If the veil and niqab become such oppressive institutions that they need to be repealed, let those wearing it to stop doing so. It doesn't take an act of the French government to end it.

Classes And Campus

I'll be posting quite a bit this week just to make up for what I've missed. Sinai was about two weeks ago, so I'm due to keep you updated about what has happened between then and now. In the interest of making it easier to read/save me time, I'll be doing it in several posts.

AUC is a bizarre place that epitomizes the wealth of Cairo in many ways. Cairo does not gentrify in the way other cities do. Take DC, for example. Columbia Heights and Mount Pleasant were once the "scary" part of town that no one dared to go to. All it took was a few college kids or yuppies, not to mention a major shopping center or two, to make it a major residential area that exemplifies the way wealth typically enters new areas. Cairo differs from this model greatly. When a new wealthy class develops, instead of finding a part of town like Imbaba or Bulaq where poverty runs rampant (though violence is low across Cairo) and redeveloping it, they move to entirely new districts created by the state. New Cairo and Rehab are stellar examples of the trend.

I take a bus every morning at 7:25 AM to school for my 8:30 class. As I drive out of the city, I take a highway that passes most of the old recognizable mosques in Cairo, namely Masjid Husayn (which, while it is a Sunni mosque, it supposedly holds the head of Imam Husayn, "chief martyr" of the Shi'i faith) and past the cramped streets of Old Cairo. At the edge of the city is nothing but desert for several kilometers until the bus reaches New Cairo. In a few years, the Mubarak regime hopes this will be a major residential area for the city's stratospherically wealthy. As of now, the skyline is dominated by cranes and construction is presumably proceeding at a rapid pace, though I drive out there too early to really tell if anything is going on (after the US credit bubble popped, much construction in Egypt halted entirely). The neighborhood is dominated by wide streets, homogeneous buildings, and posh subdivisions, all of which are a rarity in a city developed before the car and the only "subdivision" was a military district. Even more striking is AUC itself, which dominates nearly half of the currently existing region. While certainly enormous, it is typified more by its student body than anything else.

AUC is an island into itself. All students are required to be able to speak English (though some classes are in Arabic), and most students have developed that skill via education in international schools. Its distance from the city is a decent analogy for the detachment of the campus from the rest of Egypt. It feels like a different world. A school with American-value tuition and where a student in anything other than a Ralph Lauren polo is bizarre in a country where a third of the citizens live on less than two dollars a day. People at AU love to complain about how yuppy its student population is given how social justice-y they are, but that disconnect doesn't have real-world consequences in the way it does in Egypt. In my Egyptian government course, two of the Egyptian students were commenting on how they feel as though they are not governed by Egyptians and have no choice in the matter. I wonder how if these students, who have everything their country can possibly afford, can feel alienated from the state, what must the typical Egyptian feel?

I am living in a country that was not ruled by native Egyptians from Alexander the Great until the Free Officers Revolt in 1952. When you think about it, the country went as follows: the Pharaohs (numerous dynasties, many of which were foreign), Alexander, Ptolemy, Rome, the Byzantines, the Umayyads, the Abbasids, the Fatimids, the Mamluks (Bahr and Burj), Ottomans, Muhammad Ali (Albanian) and his successors, the British and their pseudo-independence, and now military rule. Even under Egyptian rulers, native Egyptians have had no say in the way their country was governed. Egyptians have developed entire parallel institutions that make them wholly independent of the government. As I said earlier, Egyptians go hungry, but do not starve. They litter, but zabbalin pick it up. Traffic makes no sense, but no one drinks and drives. It works, so no one cares that their government will never represent them. It is tragic that Egyptians have felt this way for so long that at this point such feelings are an expectation, not an exception. Apathy has become an institution into itself that is replicated from generation to generation. Skepticism of state authority is so ingrained that I have no idea how many free and fair elections it would take to get anyone to believe their vote mattered.

Sinai

Last weekend I climbed Mount Sinai with my roommate here in Cairo, my one at AU, my real estate agent, and a British fellow I met at the hostel I stayed in before I moved into my flat. We took a 45 LE (about $7) to Sinai. We arrived too late in the day to make it up in time for the sunset, but we hired a bedouin guide (as is now legally required to climb the mountain) to climb it at night so we'd get there in time for the sunrise. The climb itself was surprisingly strenuous, but I think this had more to do with my recent lack of physical exertion and the amount of extra energy expended looking for places to put your feet when climbing in the dark.

We were awoken at about 4:30 AM EEST to the sound of a Polish man singing while his congregation quite literally mumbled along with him. I would have been greatly amused if it weren't 4:30 AM and the sunrise wasn't supposed to start for about another hour. I suppose the one plus is that I got to see the sunrise in its entirety, though I could have done without the most awkward choir in church history as my alarm. It removed a bit of the ambiance. The sunrise really was amazing. I've posted several photos from the trip on my Facebook profile, but even those can't really capture how beautiful it is. It's a little too touristy, but I think that's more a function of the time of the year than anything else. All in all I'm glad I had the chance to go.

The way back was quite the adventure. Bus drivers out at St. Katherine's (the monastery at the base of the mountain) know they can rip Westerners for all they are worth because the exchange rate is so heavily slanted in our favor, so they do. Note how little I paid to get all the way from Cairo to Sinai. On the return, we were offered prices anywhere between 350 LE (which we were ultimately forced to take out of desperation: classes started the next day) and 1400 LE, and these were only to Ras Sadr or Suez, not even all the way to Cairo. We took a 350 LE bus to Ras Sadr, which is a really, really pretty town. It's right on the Gulf of Suez, which is quite the sight in itself. It's easy to overlook the town itself, as when you drive through it, you go in on a highway that is filled with gas stations and other eyesores. The town itself was filled with some amazing fish stands and was a brief walk from the beach, though we unfortunately didn't get to see the beach because our bus left soon after our arrival there (the bus cost another 35 LE, but all the way to Cairo). I'm considering going at some point later in the semester for a day trip.

All in all, Sinai was a grueling, but worthwhile experience. I recommend that if you go, go with a tour group or where you pre-pay for your return trip. Getting out there is a piece of cake, but getting back can be far more complicated, especially during a holiday.

Egyptian Oddities

There have been a number of things that have surprised me so far in travelling to Egypt. Here are some of them:

5) The number of women that wear the niqab

Men here very rarely have beards because it is an easy way for the police to identify them as fundamentalists. There is an immense fear of being connected with them (at least publicly) due to a sort of sarcastic disdain for far right religion here that combines with an understandable fear of Egyptian police and military authority to make public displays of faith a little uncouth, at least among men. Thus most of the people you see handing out religious pamphlets are women. Frequently, they wear the full niqab. Women rarely perpetrate acts of violence here, so there is less reason for the state to expend resources on cracking down on fundamentalism among them. Furthermore, this is not only among the poor. Most of the women I have seen wearing the niqab have been in Downtown and Maadi.

4) The prevalence of shame over guilt

It's easy to think in the West that the only driver of moral behavior is a negative reaction to guilt of the possible feeling thereof. At least here in Egypt, this is not the case. If one is deterred from a particular line of behavior, it is not because one will feel guilty but because it falls out of line with public expectations if a certain action is or isn't performed in response to an outside stimulus. For example, I saw two fights break out at various points in the day yesterday. These were not one-on-one affairs. Usually a crowd would build up that would watch for a period of time. There were usually two options at this point. Often the people are family, who become involved along familial lines and support whomever they are related to. The other option is how fights usually end. The goal of a fight isn't necessarily to achieve a concretized end. Rather, it is to maintain public face. As a result, fights will continue to escalate until a third party intervenes to tell everyone to cool their heels. For example, last night my real estate agent and boab (doorman) got into a shouting match over payment for services until a random bystander approached them both to tell them to calm down, at which point they both walked away. Backing down without this would have made someone look weak, and as a result outside mediation is both expected and encouraged.

3) The sheer size of the Egyptian support system

Max Rodenbeck points out in Cairo: The City Victorious that many people go to sleep hungry here, but no one ever starves. This has definitely been the case in my limited experience here, especially during Ramadan. Religion, like anything else, certainly has its plusses and minuses. Here, Islam creates an immense spirit of charity in which there are no questions asked regarding helping the poor or less fortunate. There are free iftar dinners everywhere and there is an expectation that one will tithe a portion of one's annual income to the poor, even if you yourself are struggling. No one chafes under this system, and it gives a society that would otherwise deal with crushing poverty a safety valve that channels away grievance.

2) Deference to authority

Most Cairenes chafe under excessive authority, though they rarely speak out against it, especially for abstract concepts like democracy and electoral representation. You're a lot more likely to see a protest about power outages or hashish shortages than taxation. You aren't going to see a revolution against the Mubaraks or Omar Suleiman any time soon due to a mixture of apathy and an unwillingness to stir up the pot in public.

1) The fact that the city functions at all

People here throw their trash everywhere, so the city has produced a class of people to pick it up (the zabbaleen). Poverty is an issue, so people give money to the poor. Traffic is awful, but somehow it functions and people get from point a to point b. I don't really know how or why it happens, but somehow the city pulls it together and works.

Egypt Has A Lot of Everything

Ramadan is totally messing with my internal clock. I sleep in every day until around two PM, and everything gets going around 6:30 when people break the fast. I'm usually starving by that point, so I find a place to eat and then go walk around downtown. I spent last night walking by the Nile with Phil and Kiki and went to a sheesha bar afterwards that was a little overpriced, but still dirt cheap (150 LE, which is roughly 30 bucks total for the three of us).

The Nile is beautiful. We crossed the Qasr al-Nil, which is one of the main bridges that connects Zamalek to Downtown (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qasr_al-Nil_Bridge). Each entry and exit to the bridge is flanked by two imposing lion statues, though the lions lack whiskers. Supposedly, the artist killed himself over this mistake, but it's an urban legend that is really hard to corroborate. Personally, I have my doubts, but it makes a good story.

I spent most of the day at the hostel (got my luggage, too). My Arabic is getting a lot better just from talking with the staff at the hostel, all of whom are native Egyptians. Egypt makes all of the Arabic classes in the US seem kind of useless, as the variety taught in classes, Modern Standard Arabic, is the purview of grammarians, Qur'anic scholars, and the media. 'Amiyya (the term for Arabic dialects) makes a little more sense than MSA sometimes, though the vocab is way different, particularly with verbs. I can still get by pretty well because there are enough commonalities, but a lot of pronouns or prepositions, for example, are different and take some getting used to. I went out for dinner with Phil (the bromance continues) and came back here, and I'll probably take it easy for the rest of the night.

Today I was asked by Ahmad, a friend of one of the hostel employees, what I thought of Egypt. I told him that I was starting to fall in love with it, to which he responded, "When people ask you what you think of Egypt, tell them it has a lot of everything. A lot of cars, a lot of people, a lot of emotions, a lot of rich people, a lot of poor people, a lot of buildings, and a lot of sand." So far this seems to make sense. It's definitely a land of extremes, and one that takes some getting used to. The city is filled with BMWs driving next to Yugos, and wealthy engineers walk past amputee beggars looking for a bit of Ramadan generosity. There isn't really much of an in between.

Arrival

Just arrived at my hostel in Cairo after the longest series of flights ever. The flight from NY was actually really pleasant. Watched Iron Man 2, had a decent airplane meal, and slept fairly well considering I was sitting upright. I'm tired, but that's to be expected. My flight from Charlotte to NY was hell, and continues to haunt me even though I'm a couple thousand miles away from it. So we get delayed by half an hour waiting for a clearing at JFK for when we will arrive. We board, taxi out, and then turn around because the AC apparently busted in the course of time it took to move a few feet. That took close to an hour. So my flight was delayed in total by two hours. I land in NYC, and lo and behold, the landing patch isn't open, so we have to wait for another plane to board and leave before we can connect. So I start freaking out. It's 5:30, boarding starts for my flight at 5:45, and I have no control over the situation. The flight attendants ask the passengers who do not have connecting flights or can afford to wait to do so. And of course, it's people going to NY, so absolutely no one did because God forbid you act with courtesy for someone else. And of course I get stuck behind a woman with a thick Long Island accent that I can only assume has no connecting flight who is on a respirator and not exactly making good time. Once I get past the mess of people, I make a dash for the airtrain to take me to my terminal and I am fortunate enough to have made my flight just in time. I sat next to Anwar Sadat's doppleganger and his family on the way to Egypt.

So I land in Cairo, and, of course, my luggage isn't there. I wasn't too surprised by that. The only thing that was weird is that some of the people who shared my difficulties on the Charlotte flight going to Cairo had some of their bags, but not all of them, which makes me wonder how they actually handle baggage at airports. How do you only get half of a family's bags into the plane? I assume they're all moved at once unless they got lost elsewhere. But even then, that would require taking a family's bags at some point in time and breaking them up or leaving some of them behind. It blew my mind.

But yeah, I got checked into the hostel alright. Driving here was awesome. It was like mixing North Korea with Grand Theft Auto. There was propaganda everywhere since the airport is located near a lot of military installations and some Saddam-esque portraites of Mubarak. Driving in Cairo is laughably nuts. People drive down the middle of a lane like the line is a recommendation. There aren't traffic lights anywhere. People just turn wherever and honk repeatedly at people who can't move, or people who can move, are moving, behaving totally normally, but you just feel like honking. My driver had the webbing of his thumb on the horn at all times so he could easily squeeze the horn, which he did gratuitously, though not more than any other driver. My favorite way in which I saw this trait manifest itself was when I drove past a three car fender bender in a tunnel leaving Nasr City. The guys got out of their cars, screamed at each other about whose fault it is, got back in, and drove off like it didn't happen. I'm told this is standard Cairo fare for car accidents. As I sit in my room writing this, there is at least one horn a second going off in front of my room, which faces a busy street. I actually love it. It gives the city some life and makes you feel like you aren't alone, which is a feeling I hate at night in my room. So if I were to describe Cairo on my first few impressions, it would say its old, has a GTA approach to driving, sandy, and a fleshpot.

Getting Ready to Leave

This post is more about my thoughts than anything else, so it'll read more as a stream of consciousness. Ones recounting things I'm actually doing will make a little more sense and be easier to read due to chronology's innate ordering system.

Well, I leave for Egypt tomorrow morning. It's been a good week where I've tried to get in everything from home while I could. I spent a lot of money on food, but it was definitely worth it. For anyone in Chattanooga, if you haven't eaten at Sugar's Ribs or Champy's, you haven't lived yet. I'm really grateful for all the time I've had with my mom and brother this past week. I made it a point to make sure I wouldn't have any regrets before I left, and I don't really think that I do. There were a few people I wanted to see that I couldn't, but it's not as if I'm leaving forever, so I'm not overly anxious about it. I was more focused on getting in the food and beauty of the American Southeast while I could so I could take it with me. So basically I ate a lot of fried food and barbecue, had the occasional PBR (no whiskey, unfortunately, which I will miss dearly), and looked at mountains and rain.

I'm a little anxious about the flight tomorrow, but not overly so. It's starting to set in that I'm actually leaving and won't be back for a long time. I think the first time I'll really experience culture shock will be when I get to the airport and can't read everything on the signs, but I figure a lot of them, like at most airports, will be written in English as well, and my Arabic is decent enough to get by for the most part. But I'm not terribly used to speaking it, so I'll have to get used to feeling like a tourist. It's usually a feeling I don't like given my general disdain for tourists in DC (especially on the metro), but I suppose being as pasty as I am it's inevitable in Egypt.

All in all, I'm pretty excited about finally living out my fantasy I've had since I was five of seeing King Tut, which I'll probably be doing on Wednesday when I land. After checking into my hostel, I'll be picking up a phone and hopefully headed to the Egyptian Museum. I'll be dead tired, but Arab coffee is strong and my determination to get adjusted in the week I have before classes is stronger still. I'm prepared to take the pleasure with the pain, whether it be "Nile piles," traffic, smog, congestion, hawkers hounding me incessantly, or culture shock in general.

My Thoughts on... Thoughts

So with that said, I ought to discuss my opinion on opinions. As the adage says, opinions are like belly buttons. Everyone has them. My feelings on the belly button-opinion analogy run a little deeper. Opinions, like belly buttons, are essentially meaningless. They serve a purpose, but it is an incredibly limited one with a time and a place that can outlive its usefulness. This is where the comparison stops. We live in a society today where the opinions of individuals are glorified in the media with new trends like "iReporting" and the Citizen Journalist finds infinite ways to express himself or herself via the internet through means very much like the one through which I write to you today. This is a trend that in some ways ought to be valued, but in others ought to be condemned. The opinion of society is obviously hugely relevant. It is the vehicle on which our society makes its collective decisions regarding governance and the everyday social norms that govern our behavior. However, when broken down to the individual level, the Citizen Journalist has created a dual trend that worries me greatly.

First, it has cheapened the work of the thinker. Because of the rapidity and fluidity of modern news cycles and the pace at which lives are run, there is little time for the kind of quality analysis you really only see on Fareed Zakaria GPS nowadays. Instead, we have created a news cycle built around catchphrases and ideologues. The individualization of opinion has given meaning and self-importance (I will discuss this in depth later) to a whole new range of people, many of which frankly are unqualified to be given the attention they receive.

I am of the Humean school of thought when it comes to qualifications. In discussing art, Hume argues that good art is determined by what he calls "the critic," which receives qualification of opinion via extensive work that is validated by the collective agreement (or if not agreement, than at least respect for the level of rigor involved in his or her judgment process) of peers with his or her assessment. I extend his example of "the critic" to my judgment of social commentary and its worth. I feel as though only those who have the expertise and knowledge of a given subject have opinions worth validating. How are we to decide a standard by which qualification can be determined? I suppose I have two answers. First, I hate to use the Supreme Court's obscenity defense, but qualification is something we tend to "know when we see it." For example, while I may know things about politics, I am not the man with whom you would trust your car, plane, cooking tasks, or newborn child. Likewise, I am loath to trust a man or woman who has read a book on the Middle East with resolving Yemen's water crisis or making peace between Israel and Palestine. Second, debates regarding the domination and "tyranny" of pre-existing institutions with determining authority aside (particularly within academia), I think it's pretty safe to assume that if you're a PhD candidate in a subject, you probably know a thing or two about your subject, and Joe the Plumber of 123 Main St. probably doesn't know more about you than the subject you are studying. Furthermore, differences in opinion do not count as disqualification. I doubt that despite their differences, Bob Keohane and Kenneth Waltz are second-guessing their qualifications to make political statements, nor are Stephen Breyer and Antonin Scalia asking questions about whether or not the other is an expert on the US Constitution. So in sum, qualification is something that we know when we see it, and it's fairly easy to determine who is qualified and who isn't, differences in belief set aside.

My other big issue with the Citizen Journalist is the self-importance it creates. This sounds hilarious coming from someone with a blog, as even in my opinion, a blog is in some ways the ultimate show of self-importance. However, what terrifies me about self-importance is the intractability of opinion it creates. Because news outlets, whether they be MSNBC or Fox News, glorify the opinion of the Average Joe, Average Joe feels as though his opinion is, well, relevant. And this feeling leads to an unwillingness to change one's opinion, as it creates the sensation that the feeling has been vouched for by some higher power. Let's use a famous Joe for this example. Joe Wurzelbacher, more famously known as Joe the Plumber, is a fairly average man. Aspiring small business owner, middle-aged, blue collar, from the American Midwest. Joe famously asked then-Senator Barack Obama whether or not his tax plan would "stifle the American dream (a phrase with which I have my own qualms, but that's for another day)." After his famous confrontation with the President, Mr. Wurzelbacher became a media sensation, making numerous appearances and was even a correspondent for conservative website pjtv.com about the Israel-Palestine conflict for ten days. This in itself wouldn't be a huge issue. What I struggle with is the ways in which his opinions were assumed to be meaningful.

To the best of my knowledge, Mr. Wurzelbacher does not have a college degree. He is not fluent in Hebrew or Arabic. I'd be curious to see his knowledge of the taxes he hates so much, given he supposedly owed several thousand in back taxes. In spite of these facts, Mr. Wurzelbacher was toured in front of the nation, asked about his opinion on numerous issues, and went so far as to call into question Barack Obama's loyalty to the United States. While Mr. Wurzelbacher is certainly entitled to his opinions, he has not given me any reason to believe that I should care. I doubt he's giving out well-sourced opinions about the moral or practical concerns regarding taxation. I'm sure his opinion of the Israel-Palestine conflict is informed more by his values regarding Israel's victimhood than reality, speaking as someone who is shamelessly pro-Israel. There are others, whether they be Alan Dershowitz or John Mearsheimer, who know far more about the conflict than Mr. Wurzelbacher ever will. Why are we consulting Joe the Plumber when we could be asking people with real, evidenced opinions? With the sorts of options we have today and the increasing accessibility of the academic and policy establishments to the general population, the greatest shame here is that this resource is not utilized more often.

This glorification of mediocrity and "averageness" is uniquely American. There is glory in the middle class. We bemoan its suffering, as we should. These are hard-working Americans for whom I have as much respect as I do anyone else. However, I will not find myself asking my mechanic for his opinion as to whether or not we should attack Iran, withdraw from Iraq, or counter a rising China. He is not an expert. He's damn good at fixing cars, but not solving humanity's eternal problems. His opinion, like his belly button, is meaningless.

In conclusion, why do I blog about my opinion? I do it because I feel like it. Sometimes I have thoughts on various things, and this is how I choose to put them down. However, I do not expect any of my readers to take my opinion as law, nor do I feel as though my opinion is necessarily meaningful. If you learn something, I've done my job. If there's an interesting conversation that gets going in the comment section, people at least get some gratification out of it. But 9 times out of 10 I will not be an expert on the subject I'm discussing, and I expect anyone who finds my opinion interesting to read more about it and draw your own conclusions. Humility is something to be valued, and acknowledging that we don't have all the answers and can always do a little better is possibly the most important quality in people that is unfortunately all too lacking today. We expect people to have all the answers, so much so that we even expect it out of those who should not have the answer we seek.

EDIT: Just read this article in Time that did a really good job outlining my feelings on the subject (subscription only, unless you have an iPhone): http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2010191,00.html

General Thoughts on Blogging

Before I write anything further, I guess I want to provide the blog with a little context.

To me, blogging is an interesting outlet, especially in intellectual settings. Historically, there has been a lot of animosity in academia in particular against blogs. This is in part due to academia's typical rigorous revision process and emphasis on well thought-out, peer reviewed pieces. Blogs contrast with this institution immensely. Blog posts are quickly written, short, pieces that are lucky to make it through the spellchecker, let alone peer review. However, a growing number of well-respected figures in policy circles and academia alike, such as Tufts's Daniel Drezner, Harvard's Stephen Walt, or the Center for a New American Security's (and alum of my high school) Andrew Exum, have created well-respected blogs that have gone a long way toward making their ideas far more accessible to the general population. Blogging finds itself in a position today where it is growing in legitimacy, but increasingly challenged by rapid-output news sources such as Twitter and Facebook in particular. Blog posts were never meant to be journal articles that are rigorously sourced, well argued pieces. Rather, they are supposed to be quick outputs of unrefined (for the most part) thought. Some bloggers have found it easier to move to sources like Twitter to rapidly output brief thoughts of this sort. As a result, blogging has found itself in a limbo where it must provide more depth than a tweet, but far less than a scholarly publication or a policy memo. Thus I come into blogging in a time where its future as a means of conveyance of opinion is in question and its broader pedagogical purpose is in doubt. How should blogging be used? What are the standards that should be established for blogs when, taking into account the fluid, almost stream-of-consciousness nature of their writing, they will never be on the same level as well-sourced works?

I don't really have an opinion on the subject as of now. As a Twitter user, I do not feel as though it can ever supplant blogging with its character limit. It cannot provide the depth that, while limited, can still serve to inform opinions and make those of academia and high-end policy circles far more accessible to a general population that in the day of cable news is in sore need of thinkers instead of demagogues. I hope my posts will be fairly brief, come often, and may be more indicative of my thought process than an academic work may be.

Welcome!

Hey all. I assume if you're reading this you're interested in following my travels, or for one reason or another find my opinions on various issues meaningful enough to read them. So I suppose I'll start out with a bit of background about the blog and what I want to do with it.

Late this past spring I decided that I would keep a blog detailing some of my experiences abroad in Egypt this coming fall. It should make updating people far easier than calling them and make my trip more accessible to those who are interested in it. This was the initial purpose, and it should remain the focal point of my blogging for the next six months or so.

I've had a cursory interest in blogging for a while now and considered starting my own at various points over the past two years, but now has been only time I've felt particularly driven to do so. Seeing as how I hope to make this more of a long-term project, I'll also be writing my opinion on various subjects or posting articles I find interesting so as to give the blog a little more life and stretch its usefulness out past the fall. I'll write occasionally about issues that make me think too much or about which I find myself arguing with brick walls and thus find little means of gratification outside of this blog. They'll primarily be social or political in orientation, though there might be the occasional piece that's a little different if the mood so strikes me.

So with that, I welcome you to my blog! I do welcome comments, and I'll respond as soon as possible to those worth dignifying (:P).