This is a little history lesson (you may or may not already know) but Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-1970), was one of the greatest geniuses produced by Egypt in the last five hundred years. He was the first Egyptian since the last of the Pharaohs 2,500 years ago to "actually" govern Egypt (nevermind the idiot whose in the seat of power now). Nasser led the complete liberation of Egypt and the restitution of national dignity in a titanic struggle with both his 35 million mostly downtrodden people and numerous world powers that undercut his efforts at every opportunity.
Nasser wrote a short personal book titled “Egypt’s Liberation: The Philosophy of the Revolution” about his ideas and dreams. It reveals a sweeping yet deeply analytical mind and acute observer of human behavior whose periods of disillusionment and exhilaration were intense. First published in 1955, his book was all but ignored by the world. “What interest there was centered on the feeling that the author reflected a sincere desire to improve the lot of the Egyptian people through political and socio-economic reforms,” noted Thomas Troy in the book’s foreword. Three years before publication of the book, Britain, France, Israel, the Soviet bloc, and most Western powers, including the United States, had duly noted the 1952 Nasser-led bloodless Army coup d’etat that resulted in the exile of Egypt’s corrupt and incompetent King Farouk. These powers were later caught by surprise by the furious path the exuberant Nasser forged for his beloved Egypt in the next 18 years that followed.
A quote from the book that caught me...
"We needed order, but we found nothing behind us but chaos. We needed unity, but we found nothing behind us but dissension. We needed work, but we found behind us only indolence and sloth. It was from these facts, and no others, that the revolution coined its slogan. Every man we questioned had nothing to recommend except to kill someone else. Every idea we listened to was nothing but an attack on some other idea. If we had gone along with everything we heard, we would have killed off all the people and torn down every idea, and there would have been nothing left for us to do but sit down among the corpses and ruins, bewailing our evil fortune and cursing our wretched fate."
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