Tahrir Square and Andy Dick

2/16/11

 

Tahrir Square

and Andy Dick

The Middle East is ablaze right now. Not with the usual perpetual outrage, mind you; Real revolution is on the mind of everyone and no one knows how this will turn out. When I think the of word “revolution”, the first thing that comes to mind is not what you think; It’s the drug fueled comedic genius of Andy Dick. Suffering a mid life crisis at 30, his character Matthew Brock on Newsradio becomes a punk rocker with a bad Cockney accent. When confronted by his boss, he lifts up his shirt and screams “REVOLUTION!!”

 Watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IX-9zdNkpw&feature=related from 7:50 to 9:06.

So the question is: Will the uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, Iran, Bahrain, Jordan, and others spawn democracy, peace with Israel, greater economic opportunity?

In the last 50 years, there have been a few revolutions that didn’t turn out so well. The 1956 Hungarian uprising started pleasantly with the toppling of a 30 foot Stalin statue and the overthrow of their communist dictatorship. Their jubilation ended with Soviet tanks, 200,000 refugees and 2500 dead Hungarians. Between 1956 and 1959, Tibetans rebelled against the Chinese. The result? 180,000 dead, many by execution and torture. More recently, the massive uprisings in Iran resulted in mass beatings and even a few being shot.

Of course, many revolutions in history were indeed successful: Ours for one, the French for another. In 1979, the corrupt Shah of Iran was successfully overthrown. But even though the uprising was populist and driven by freedom minded modernists, it was stolen by the more organized and motivated Islamists. The Cedar revolution in Lebanon also began with democracy and hope. Just last month, Hezbollah, a decidedly undemocratic movement, took over the government through dubious but totally legal means. The results remain to be seen but most experts do not predict liberty will flourish.

So what makes for a good revolution? Surely the Facebook savvy youth in Egypt are righteous and justified. Surely they deserve our support. Our own nation was birthed by radicals with guns. But all this recent upheaval has caused me to ponder the nature of revolution itself and I keep coming to the question of values. What is in the hearts of the rebels and does it matter? The “whys” of the revolutions do matter. The American and French Revolutions had some similarities. Both were driven by Enlightenment ideals but the Americans were also driven by religious values. Why does it matter? Because the two rebellions themselves and the results they gave us were so drastically different. The American Revolution turned out pretty well. The French Revolution was a blood bath ending in dictatorship.

So as I watch the ecstatic cheers of the Egyptians in

Tahrir Square

, I can’t be helped but be filled with hope and anticipation. But I also can’t get the images of Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini and Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah out of my head. Matthew Brock’s rebellion wasn’t born of nobility but by a childish sense of oppression and angst. So I have just one question for you, the Arab youth with your fist in the air: Are you George Washington? Or Andy Dick.