I was listening to NPR the other day, and the panel of commentators and experts were discussing the labour and union-related protests in Wisconsin. And as the discussion wound down, one of the panelists said something that gave me pause. She said that the intensity of the protests in Wisconsin may not let up as soon as one might imagine, and that some of that endurance and resilience could be a direct result of the events in Egypt. That the power of the masses was tested and proven half a world away in Egypt, and the people in Wisconsin drew strength from this.
Had I heard the mainstream media in America ever speak of events in the Middle East in such terms before? Arabs had flexed their democratic muscle and how refreshingly odd it was to hear of Americans drawing inspiration from this. I had become so accustomed to hearing of freedom and democracy as America's primary exports to the world. But here the current of ideas and ideologies seemed to have changed direction in a way that I would not have predicted as possible a mere month ago.
Perhaps this is a temporary reversal of roles, and perhaps American presumptions about the rest of the world shall in the long term remain unaltered. But the optimist in me would like to believe that something has changed for good, if ever so slightly. For once, our gaze in America looks farther away than the limits of red, white and blue. For once, there is an acknowledgement that the freedom of another people is not being won at the end of American gun-barrels; that the rage of a mass of bearded men is a just rage; that veiled women are women with will and women with voices that can and are heard; and that we who have been lulled into complacence by the warm and fuzzy ideal of 'inalienable rights' have been awakened from our stupor by the voices of men and women we presumed to be mute.
How can we go back to the way we were after all this?
Had I heard the mainstream media in America ever speak of events in the Middle East in such terms before? Arabs had flexed their democratic muscle and how refreshingly odd it was to hear of Americans drawing inspiration from this. I had become so accustomed to hearing of freedom and democracy as America's primary exports to the world. But here the current of ideas and ideologies seemed to have changed direction in a way that I would not have predicted as possible a mere month ago.
Perhaps this is a temporary reversal of roles, and perhaps American presumptions about the rest of the world shall in the long term remain unaltered. But the optimist in me would like to believe that something has changed for good, if ever so slightly. For once, our gaze in America looks farther away than the limits of red, white and blue. For once, there is an acknowledgement that the freedom of another people is not being won at the end of American gun-barrels; that the rage of a mass of bearded men is a just rage; that veiled women are women with will and women with voices that can and are heard; and that we who have been lulled into complacence by the warm and fuzzy ideal of 'inalienable rights' have been awakened from our stupor by the voices of men and women we presumed to be mute.
How can we go back to the way we were after all this?
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