By Steve Sailer
02/09/2011
I've been trying to stay interested in the Most Important Event Since the French Revolution, but here’s today’s three-degrees-of-meta NYT headline and it’s not helping:
Allies Press U.S. to Go Slow on Egypt
Maybe if there were some more attacks on camelback, but a lot of these things these days just turn into a test of who has better restroom facilities.
What I’m reminded of is that fairly similar stuff happens in Mexico regularly without the U.S. press paying much attention at all.
For example, back in 2006, there was an uprising in the capital of the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca in which revolting schoolteachers seized the central plaza and held it for months against attacks by the government. I thought that was pretty interesting and followed it for awhile, but it kept going on and on. And then, after a long while, it wasn’t going on anymore, but I still don’t know what happened. Here’s the Wikipedia article on it, but it looks way too long for me to read. So, I guess I was wrong, it wasn’t very interesting after all. Or there was the Presidential election in 2006 in Mexico when the leftist challenger was leading in the vote counting up until the last truckload of ballots arrived, and then — suddenly — the ruling party candidate had won. The aggrieved leftist loser announced he was the Real President of Mexico and that he and his followers would occupy the Zocalo. And they did, for awhile, until they didn’t. Or maybe they're still there. I don’t know. And don’t get me started on 1994 when masked rebels seized control of part of Southern Mexico (Do they still have control? Do they still wear masks? I've lost touch) and there were a bunch of awesome Manchurian Candidate-style assassinations: of a Cardinal (in full robes at the airport), the ruling party’s Presidential candidate (only five miles from America), and the ruling party’s chairman, who was the President’s ex-brother-in-law. Have these been solved? I guess the President’s brother went to prison for the last one, but the last I heard he was out and the case had sputtered out. And then there’s been all the head-chopping over the last four years. Here’s a headline from yesterday’s Salt Lake Tribune:
Army official suggests U.S. troops might be needed in Mexico
Is this important? I dunno. All these years, I've been trying to pay attention to Mexico when everybody else is obsessing over the Middle East. After all, I reasoned, Mexico is right next door to us, while the Middle East isn’t. Plus, you gotta admit this Mexican stuff can be pretty colorful. How about the growing cults of Jesus Malverde, the narco saint, and Santa Muerte? On the other hand, how much of this Mexican history has turned out to be all that important? Mexico seems to keep on being Mexico, just with more Wal-Marts and more chopped heads. Maybe the American press was right to pay little attention to Mexico. On the other hand, how much of this Middle East stuff that preoccupies them turns out to matter much either?
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