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Thanks, and well yes we are not yet in the abyss. But that certainly doesn't mean that Middle East societies and their sometimes stunningly articulate intelligencia are not already arrived.
You had to watch, listen, and watch more and listen more before you realized, Cairo is one unbelievably rich place in all its human, intellectual, working class, and everyother way ... ripe with portend, in motion, scary, wonderful.... Yes, yes, the traffic, bread to buy, the kids off to school, the damned job all at the same time.
In various places Trotsky notes, most of life went on relatively uneffected as the Winter Palace and Kerensky fell. At some point in those hours Lenin and Trotsky are taking a rest break in an empty room away from the noise and activity. They are laying side by side on a blanket on the hardwood floor. They say nothing. There is nothing to say. They have won but there is tomorrow ...
And I don't really care anymore where, just as long it is somewhere.
If you think about it, remember that it was a great shock that the grand revolution struggled for in Germany and less so in France, suddenly erupted in Russia.
Let me put it this way. In a few hours after starting Trotsky's History, I thought Cairo is in a February Stall. And, after finishing the book I thought their direction is toward some imaginary October, or I sure hope for them, that's where they are headed. It won't be the same, maybe not even too close, but it could be something grand.
And let's say Egypt does re-invent October. Do we have any idea what that would do to the global elites?
CG