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Is there a decent, fair-minded person on this planet who doesn't extend immense solidarity toward those brave souls standing their ground in Tahrir Square and elsewhere, in the face of the most cruelly brutal violence that dictator Hosni Mubarak's mercenary thugs can sadistically muster?
As of this writing, Egypt's titanic battle between the forces of rectitude and evil, light and darkness, liberty and despotism - between a wretched past and bright possibilities tomorrow - is still very much in doubt.
We would like to believe, of course, that the good guys (plus women and children) will soon win.
But humanity's annals are stained with the blood of countless causes, plainly righteous and so seemingly certain of quick victory, that were cut to shreds by monarchs, tyrants, imperialists, pious believers in this religion or that, etc., who unleashed decimating barbarism to crush challenges to their diabolical rule.
Mubarak seems to fairly drip with the defiant malice characteristic of justly hated past rulers who found themselves backed into corners by advancing progress, only to savagely beat their way out, at terrible cost to thousands, if not tens of thousands.
If confronted with a choice between ouster or slaughter, I fear he'll choose the latter.
The Egyptian people will eventually triumph, but we should prepare our sensibilities for the searing possibility that their day of rapturous joy may come only after an agonizing period of sharp setbacks.and grim funerals.
News reports tell of snipers now being employed by the Mubarak gang to wantonly murder pro-democracy activists in open areas, at lower elevations.
As difficult as it is to imagine or accept, even more morally depraved means may be used in a surpassingly wicked attempt to kill emerging democracy.
Perhaps, and hopefully, such outrages will spur decisive players beyond the current streets to take necessary action. We wish that conscientious soldiers would burst into Mubarak's hiding place and force his removal, along with his like-minded underlings.
Whatever pressure the world's watching people can exert in furtherance of Egyptian popular success must quickly, fully be brought to bear.
Let's completely understand that democracy in the abstract isn't what this momentous rebellion is actually about.
It's about gaining the democratic means to correct staggering economic injustice that allows a tiny societal minority to sit in luxurious leisure beside lavish swimming pools in gated communities while the majority populace toils in sweatshops, or squats on the ground, begging for meager sustenance.
That Third World commonality is something we ourselves can very closely come to expect under increasingly reactionary political influence that insists on imposing harsh "austerity" on our own masses.
Just so corporate/financial hierarchs can continue to obscenely, excessively profit.
Cairo's outcome in the relatively near future may be New York's or Chicago's not that far down the timeline, so we must do everything we can, today, to assure that the greatest gains for the largest number can be realized through the most peaceful means by this planet's everyday multitudes.
We're all Egyptians now.
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