Egypt Under Empire: Dancing Between Dictatorship and Democracy

America's ruling elites - and those of the Western world more generally - are comfortable dealing with ruthless tyrants and dictators all over the world, partly because they've just had more practice with it than dealing with 'democratic' governments in so-called 'Third World' nations. This is especially true when it comes to the Arab world, where the West has only ever dealt with dictatorships, and often by arming them and supporting them to repress their own populations, and in return, they support US and Western geopolitical, strategic and economic interests in the region. America's relationship with Egypt - and most notably with Hosni Mubarak, who ruled Egypt from 1981 to 2011 - has been especially revealing of this imperial-proxy relationship between so-called 'democracies' and dictatorships.

Maintaining cozy relationships with ruthless tyrants is something US presidents and their administrations have done for a very long time, but in recent decades and years, it has become more challenging. The United States champions its domestic propaganda outwardly, presenting itself as a beacon of democratic hope, a light of liberty in a dark world, espousing highfalutin rhetoric as the expression of an adamantine code of values - beliefs in 'freedom' and 'democracy' as untouchable and non-negotiable - all the while arming despots, tyrants, and ruthless repressors to protect themselves against their own populations and to stem the inevitable tide of human history.

Simply by virtue of the fact that people are more connected than ever before, that more information is available now than ever before, and with more people rising up and demanding change in disparate regions all over the world, it has become more challenging for the United States and its imperial partners to maintain their domination over the world, and to maintain their propagandized fantasies in the face of glaring hypocrisies. In short, it's harder for the world to take America seriously about democracy when it so consistently arms and works with dictatorships. And so, for those who justify such injustice, they must dance between rhetoric and reality, attempting to find some thin line of reasoning between both to present some pretense of rationality; all the while, attempting to undermine any attempts to understand America as an empire. This dance is difficult, often very spastic and erratic, but America is a championship dancer with dictatorships. America's 'Mambo with Mubarak', however, revealed the challenges of being the ultimate global hypocrite in a world of mass awakening and popular uprisings.



Con't @ [link to truth-out.org]