Lies So Big Sleepy Time Disrupted

The elites who govern the United States are out of touch. An example can be found anywhere you want to look. Issues like minimum wage, executive compensation, social programs, war and peace -- just keep going on down the line. The rulers are out of step with the ruled. The citizens come to accept -- for the most part not consciously -- that they're no longer citizens but subjects. The rulers don't want this subconscious acceptance to be made manifest because then the subjects might demand their rights as citizens; and if so, governing then becomes much more difficult for elites. So the lies fed to the masses have to be plausible, they have to fit in with a sleepy-time narrative; they can't be so egregious that they force to consciousness the obvious -- that we are all subjects in an absolutist state.

Well, the lies -- so big and nonsensical -- are becoming disruptive to sleepy time. Take the latest from Secretary of State John Kerry: "Kerry Says Egypt’s Military Was ‘Restoring Democracy’ in Ousting Morsi":

Secretary of State John Kerry offered an unexpected lift to Egypt’s military leaders on Thursday, saying they had been “restoring democracy” when they deposed the country’s first freely elected president, Mohamed Morsi, on July 3 after mass demonstrations against his rule.

“The military was asked to intervene by millions and millions of people” who feared the country would descend into chaos, Mr. Kerry said during a visit to Pakistan, a country that has seen four military coups since the 1950s. In Egypt, Mr. Kerry said, “The military did not take over, to the best of our judgment — so far.”

His comments echoed those of Egypt’s defense minister, Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, who has said that he repeatedly warned Mr. Morsi to change course and that he was carrying out the people’s will by deposing him. Mr. Kerry’s blunt comments represented the strongest endorsement yet by the United States of the military intervention, which the Obama administration has refused to call a coup. 

Using that term would require the United States to suspend its annual $1.5 billion aid package, a move that American officials assert would further destabilize Egypt. Instead, the administration has found a way to avoid the question altogether, deciding last week that it was not legally required to determine whether the military had engineered a coup or not. 

On Thursday, tens of thousands of Mr. Morsi’s Islamist supporters continued their sit-ins at two Cairo squares, defying intensifying warnings from the Egyptian authorities to abandon the protests or face their dispersal by force.

At the end of the story by Michael Gordon and Kareem Fahim, Kerry is quoted as saying that a violent crackdown on the protesters is "absolutely unacceptable" and "cannot happen." But when you're publicly proclaiming that kidnapping a duly elected leader of a vast, important country is a restoration of democracy and that the military did not take over, who can believe anything you say?

So I expect a crackdown is coming, and it will be messy. Having participated in the Seattle WTO protests at the end of 1999, I can say from personal experience that security forces have a great deal of difficulty dislodging sit-ins. They resort to extreme force -- e.g., firing point blank on people sitting cross-legged on the ground -- in the hopes that protesters will disperse out of fear. But invariably what happens is that there are enough brave, tenacious souls to hold their ground; and when others see the brutality inflicted upon them, they come running to their aid, and you've got a riot on your hands.

This likely is what is in store for the two Muslim Brotherhood protest camps in Cairo. The massacres seem to take place at the transition from week to weekend and vice versa. The riot will ripple out to the rest of Cairo. Kerry will amble up to a microphone stand at some point and explain to us how the bloodletting is tragic but that the United States is committed to democracy and will work to make sure elections take place.