Dis-chord

A few days before my iPod broke, I was wandering back to the dorms from the local market, listening to my 4,098 songs on shuffle. On came a song I hadn't heard in a long, long time: 'Tis of Thee, by Ani Difranco. For those of you who don't know her, she's an indie songstress with a haunting voice that calls for social change.

I don't know how I quite ended up with it in my library, as the last time I remember hearing it was the also the first. Listening to 'Tis of Thee was an assignment, actually; it was part of a unit in my English class that focused on music and "lyrics as literature." I was part of a 5-person group given Difranco's song for an impromptu analysis, and after ten minutes in the hall, we had our very by-the-book explanation of what the song meant. But while the song appealed to me musically, something about it felt wrong.

In it she sings:

My country 'tis of thee
To take swings at each other on the talkshow tv
Why don't you just go ahead and turn off the sun
'Cause we'll never live long enough
To undo everything they've done to you

It's a song about American society, poverty, and race relations. During our presentation, I reached for what I thought was wrong. I remember saying that she was couching her plea for unity in terms of 'they' and 'you,' thereby perpetuating the problem and widening the divide.

It was a rushed and hurried assessment, and I wouldn't even remember it today if it weren't for the fact that I carry every day of that class with me. It was a remarkable time in my life: I thought hard, I loved deep, I was filled with excitement and passion for things as simple as the sun, and I wrote creatively for the last time in my life. I was 15. I don't know if that teacher reads this. I hope he does. I made him a promise, once--nulla dies sine linea--and it's damn past time I started keeping it.

I think of Ani Difranco sometimes when I think about that class. Sometimes I even sing her songs idly in the shower. But I hadn't listened to it since past remembrance until last week walking home from the market. I tried to think, what was it that I exactly didn't like about this song? It wasn't the pronoun usage that bothered me anymore. And then I got it:

Fatalism.

She sings about the ills of the inequalities of American society ("they put everyone in jail / except the Cleavers and the Bradys"), racism, smallpox blankets and poverty, and her grand lyrical suggestion is to "turn off the sun" because the situation is past hope.

And that's what really gets me. Nothing grand was ever accomplished through fatalism. No struggle was ever won under white flags. She's given up on not just the manifestation but the idea of America. And all this while, I'm getting angry at her, angry at her dissension and her seemingly willful capitulation. But then I remember: her right to sing about the hopelessness of America is what makes America. While I resent her diagnosis, nothing was ever changed in this world without vociferous dissent. And this is hers.

Tonight a group of us went to a panel lecture discussing the recently proposed constitutional amendments here in Egypt. One of the speakers was a representative of the Muslim Brotherhood. (If you don't know much about them, my go-to is Wikipedia. Educate yo'self.)

It's difficult to really ascertain what all is included in the amendment package pushed by the government. The local media is unreliable, often censored or just plain wrong, and the Internet is almost just as bad. Online, the discussion of the amendments focuses on removing socialist elements of the constitution, and expanding some fiscal powers of the assembly. At the panel tonight, the amendments were described in very different terms: the elimination of political parties with religious affiliation; a statute on who can run for office, limiting it to party leaders, in effect prohibiting independent candidates (the Muslim Brotherhood, banned from participating in Egyptian politics, routinely runs their candidates as independents), and an abolition of presidential term limits.

Unfortunately, the discussion was in Arabic and way over my level of comprehension. I stuck around long enough to listen to a long speech by the representative from the Brotherhood, and the English summary. In between jokes that I didn't understand but left the crowd laughing (I did understand, however: "The world is dominated by two men who think God speaks to them: Bush and Bin Laden."), he argued that banning religion from politics is impossible in Egypt, and pointed to Article 2 of the Egyptian constitution:

"Islam is the Religion of the State. Arabic is its official language, and the principal source of legislation is Islamic Jurisprudence (Sharia)."

He went on to say that the Brotherhood did not advocate a religious state, but a civil state with a religion. There are only two theocracies left in the world, he said: Iran and Israel, and Egypt should not be like either of these countries. Finally, banning anyone other than party leaders from office excludes over 78 million Egyptians from democratic politics.

It was good to hear his opinion, and it is going to be very interesting to be living in Egypt during the election and referendum season. In 2005, the Muslim Brotherhood won 88 seats (20%) in the Egyptian assembly. Their supporters see them as the leading opposition party in Egypt; their detractors see them at best as a threat to the stability of Egypt, and at worst a terrorist organization.

Within the last few days, the Egyptian government has done a wide sweep of arrests focused on Brotherhood members; in total they have detained over 300:

"...the Brotherhood charges that Mubarak — who has held autocratic power for a quarter century — wants to eliminate the sole opposition movement that could challenge his regime if a fair vote were held. The Brotherhood and secular opposition groups accuse the 78-year-old president of trying to ensure his son, Gamal, succeeds him.

The Brotherhood, which has been banned since 1954 banned but runs candidates as independents, made dramatic gains in parliament elections in late 2005, winning a fifth of the legislature's seats."

Read more about it here.

I have a lot to say about these recent developments in Egypt, but I won't. One, I'm not Egyptian nor an expert on Egyptian politics, and my place is as an observer here. As Sarah says, I've got no dog in this fight. But primarily, the Internet is not an anonymous commons, as this article will deftly highlight:

From The Washington Post, The 'Crime' of Blogging in Egypt.

I'll leave it at that. One of my friends here is in a class taught by a professor who enjoyed a similar experience due to his or her published opinion of Egyptian governance. It's not frequent, but it does happen.

Which brings me back to Ani Difranco. The opinions voiced in the song that I found so abhorrent in the United States seem sweet to me here, simply because I know that she, unlike the characters of her music, will never see the inside of a jail for simply adding her voice to the fray. It's what makes baroque music so beautiful: the addition of the atonal makes whole the melody.

We all know this famous phrase, which is often attributed to Voltaire but was actually coined by Beatrice Hall in an attempt to capture Voltaire's spirit, but I'll repeat it anyway:

Je désapprouve ce que vous dites, mais je défendrai à la mort votre droit à le dire.

And never would it mean so much, a French phrase to an American girl in the streets of Egypt.

'Tis of thee, indeed.

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UPDATE: Abdel Kareem Nabil sentenced to four years in prison for his blog.