Arab Spring Not Entirely Panning Out Quite As Incurable Optimists Hoped

Well, it wouldn't be Spring without a few dark clouds

With the Egyptian army killing civilians in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, imams holding the reins of power in Tunisia and rival factions turning their guns on each other for control of Libya, incurable optimists are experiencing some feelings of dismay about the achievement of an earthly paradise taking slightly longer to materialise on the shores of North Africa than they had previously predicted.

“With the benefit of hindsight, maybe the faith Egypt’s anti-Mubarak protesters placed in the generals who had been propping him up for thirty years could be described as charmingly naïve,” said one democracy addict, who fervently longs for the day when he is personally consulted on every last finickity detail of everything. “But I’m pretty sure they’ll get blisters on their trigger fingers or something, sooner or later, at which point absolute freedom will immediately assert itself... er… unless the Egyptians freely and democratically vote for an Islamic party, like the Tunisians did and the Moroccans seem to be doing, in which case it might take a century or two longer than I’d ideally like.”

“And as for Libya… er… oil… Western interference… corporate interests… you know,” he added.

“Meanwhile, I’m incredibly optimistic that the various Occupy movements springing up all over the Western world will surely bring down the crumbling edifice of capitalism, as billions spontaneously rise up peacefully against the cynical last-ditch deployment of state-sanctioned brutality, ushering in a new era of universal harmony for everyone in the entire world – probably next April, I reckon, if I’m not very much mistaken,” he predicted confidently.