horse of george

Islamists, including of the ultra-conservative Salafis variety, look to be winning and winning big in Egyptian 'elections' - and remarkably some seem surprised and consequently disquieted by this turn of events. As a moderately intelligent person - or, moderately not unintelligent person - I'm consistently amazed and intrigued by authentically bright people, people much smarter than me, getting tripped up by logical permutations that just seem so obvious - to wit avid Israel hater Thomas Friedman in Times today grudgingly having to admit that maybe Israel's highly cynical take on the putative Arab Spring has been right all along. Really? This is just occurring to you now? You know, I can forgive a person for coming to the wrong conclusion on something - what I find troubling and much less venial is the failure or complete inability of so many of our 'public intellectuals' to objectively consider the various potentialities any given event may give rise to before coming to their possibly flawed conclusions - that the chimerical Arab Spring could produce outcomes decidedly not in the best interests of the West was obvious to anyone willing just for moment to put aside their preferred point of view - yet so many, on both left and right, proved unable or unwilling do that simple thing. I find that troubling - although, given the nature of the beast, possibly not all that surprising.