What Did You Do on Revolution Day?

Sunday, the 25th was the fourth anniversary of the Egyptian Revolution.  Things were fairly quiet, this year.  Everyone kept a pretty low profile and no one went downtown.  If you have been following international news, you might have seen headlines along the lines of this:

Death toll rises to 17 on fourth anniversary of Arab Spring

or this:

516 arrested in Egypt anniversary unrest: Minister

as the now outlawed Muslim Brotherhood tried to take another run at showing their strength.

The people here have no interest in contributing to another revolution, and this Politico article  summarizes the past four years remarkably well.  I recommend reading the whole thing.

While the activists’ revolutionary dreams were never realized, Egypt’s state broke down further, and remains quite broken today. As a result of this experience, many Egyptians are so fearful of change that they are now content to live with their broken state, since they view it as preferable to further collapse.

...Egypt’s state collapsed even further under Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi, who won the June 2012 presidential elections, in large part due to the Brotherhood’s particular nature. The Brotherhood is a vanguard—a deeply hierarchical organization that aims to resist Western influence from the grassroots up. Specifically, it works to “Islamize” the individual through its rigid five-to-eight-year indoctrination program; then “Islamize” the society by dispatching its members to recruit new Muslim Brothers through social services; then “Islamize” the state by winning elections and appointing its members to positions of authority; and finally establishing a “global Islamic state” comprised of other Brotherhood-run countries, which will challenge the West for worldwide hegemony.

About the only thing not mentioned in the article is the perception among the Egyptian population that the Brotherhood's best friend was and remains the United States government. (I will pass on mentioning specific names that are brought up!)

UPDATE: 1/28/2015
See this story about the U.S. State Department hosting a group of Muslim Brotherhood representatives in Washington yesterday.  

If you followed the first couple of links that I presented, you probably found that this year's trouble was limited to a few neighborhoods where the Brotherhood still has some influence.  None are anywhere near where we live.

We went out for a walk in the afternoon up to our nearest supermarket (reportedly Brotherhood owned!) and did a little shopping.  Traffic was light and we enjoyed the stroll as always.

Tomorrow, we are headed downtown to the Egyptian Museum and hope to be able to give a report on the King Tut beard controversy.  See story here, here or here.