Baby Tahrir

When you can terrify all the major competing political orthodoxies you know you're doing something right.
The courage and spirituality of the Egyptian people has managed to scare all the obsolete, overblown, blood-soaked orthodoxies of the last 50 years, from the Pentagon to Tehran, from fundamentalist consumerism to fundamentalist Islam. It has released the code for change. People just have to install the update, and take control. This will concentrate the minds of dictators like a digital guillotine-blade waiting to drop.
Possibly the most radical achievement of the revolution has been to pull the rug from under radical religion as a method of resistance. Jihad will now only be for the most twisted fanatics. It has also shown that tanks are not the weapon of the Information Age. Something of a full hand of historical lessons.
These were 18 days which shook the world, and not a burned American or Israeli flag or 'God Is Great' to be found. Just pure unadulterated Humanity, expressing its true heroism, and experiencing true Strength through Joy - which has overturned a lot of dreary misanthropist assumptions and challenged a lot of conditioning. People just aren't supposed to be capable of this. They always need to be told what to do otherwise there's chaos. They're just children really, to be instructed through punishment and bribery.
Who can't fail to weep for such people? Where is their own self-respect that they could not identify with the hope and courage and spirituality of the Egyptian people? Why did they need the revolution to fail so badly? Because it threatened their identity by asserting that human beings are far nobler than anything they could imagine. Which reveals just what kind of mentality is required of our society.
The other problem for the bitter depressives who have been preaching doom and disaster from the start is the inevitable way this shared experience will have changed Egyptian society itself. No people who have fought such a battle with such courage and fellowship can emerge un-bonded to their comrades, of whatever political or religious faction. So Egypt today is a very different beast from that of even 2 weeks ago. Its people are more aware of the fact that they have far more in common with each other than divides them. It also has a Hero Class from the Defendants of Tahrir, who are now the embodiment of the people's ideals, and will be held accountable for their implementation. But the country is united by its experience, as very few other nations have been in times of radical change.
And this is just a beginning, and not just for Egypt. One of the first jokes from the new Egypt is that since Ben Ali of Tunisia and Mubarak both fled on Fridays, Muamar Ghadaffi is banning them. Just a joke. But some people in Libya will read it online and suddenly find themselves laughing at The Great Leader. From then on it is only a matter of time for him. A little butterfly joke beating its wings in Cairo could cause a hurricane in Libya. Possibly. But one thing is certain, all over the world, millions of babies born this year will be called Tahrir.