What a great word. Filibuster. Most of us don’t know what this word means even though it is a great tool to have when in the Senate. Filibuster means obstruction made deliberately by delaying (aka long speeches and such). This gives power to the minority party.
The catch for this is that most citizens in America don’t know that this is a part of our government. When I was running through the halls of the school yelling “filibuster” at my friends, half of them thought it was a vocabulary word that they forgot to study. I see it as a leg up in a government where everyone is represented.
The filibuster might be viewed as an ideal tool by Egyptians because it would mean that the parties of Egypt are not corrupt and care about helping the people and not themselves. America might as well be a Platonic republic in their eyes. In Egypt, the government is wholly corrupt. Okay, when you look at the big picture it looks pretty and official. The outside thinks that the people actually have a say in their government and that there is even a legislative body called the People’s Assembly.
The best way I can depict how well the people of Egypt are living with this government is by referencing a movie I watched called The Chef’s Cook (except it was in Arabic). It showed how the president was sheltered from the way the citizens lived. His cook started showing him what was really happening in Egypt and how they were charged really high prices for barely nothing at all.
When his advisers found out that he was learning the truth they fired that cook and hired a new one. The new cook was their puppet. During his interview the president asked the cook how much was the bread and he confessed that it was about $5 a loaf. When the president asked how large this loaf was he held his hands out about six inches apart. The president’s advisers didn’t like the answer so the cook spread out his arms about three feet apart.
We are given freedom and fairness that we take for granted. No matter which party has a president sitting in the White House they fight for what is best for us, the citizens of this country. Most countries like Egypt suffer. Yes, they have a lot of good things in play for them that we can learn from but if the first class is going to cheat everyone else then what is the point of having something so spectacularly amazing?
But it’s not all bad. One of these amazing things is that they do not have taxes. The things that they buy are for one price and that is the price that is on the price tag. That might not make a difference to some people since everything is becoming more expensive, but my next revelation will blow your mind. Egypt, a second world country, has free health care. Yes, you read that right: F-R-E-E that spells free. They have had free health care for about 57 years. They became a republic 57 years ago. America on the other hand has been a country for almost 234 and we are only debating about health care.
Sometimes countries that seem backwards to some people are actually more advanced than others. This is the beauty of this world: wealth can be given to one country and ways to make a great idea work to another. This is one of the other things that makes me wonder why two different worlds can’t have compromise.
