04/24/2025
Cursing Trump? America's āMorsiā Moment Is Fast Approaching
In the spring of 2013, I visited Egypt. It had been two years since the uprisings known as the āArab Springā had toppled the government ā and in the aftermath, an angry, conservative base ready to make Egypt Islamist again had helped propel the āFreedom and Justice Partyā to power and elected their leader, Mohamed Morsi, as president.
Once they were in power, the Freedom and Justice Party largely ignored ā and then rewrote ā the Egyptian constitution, granting Morsi unrestricted authority, freeing him to ignore any judicial oversight, and earning him the nickname āEgyptās new pharaoh.ā
Assuming their election win gave them a mandate to reinvent the government according to their hardline conservative vision, they turned Egyptian society upside down with a revolutionary fervor. They had no idea how to smartly wield power, but they were armed with a kind of Project 2012 blueprint (their āRenaissance Projectā) as they fed the finer points of the Egyptian deep state into a DOGE-like woodchipper. Within a year, Egyptians realized that running a country is more complicated than bumper sticker complaints and angry flag-waving, and the people rose up. After a bloody counter-revolution, Morsi ended up in jail, where he stayed until his death.
Traveling in Egypt during Morsiās brief but chaotic presidency, the frustrations of being governed by an extreme party that was overreaching in the name of reform were as clear to me as the bread lines at the government bakeries. In fact, whenever previously reliable government-provided services (which the Morsi administration had āfixedāā¦ but actually broken) malfunctioned, people would use their presidentās name as a curse. So, instead of āOh, sh*t,ā theyād simply exclaim, āMorsi.ā
Yes, in 2013, the universal way Egyptians would complain about something not working was to slam their fists on the table and cry their presidentās name. āMorsi!ā A light bulb flickers out with the powerā¦ āMorsi!ā The garbage truck never arrivesā¦ āMorsi!ā The internet failsā¦ āMorsi!ā A sewer overflowsā¦ āMorsi!ā The Egyptian currency depreciates in valueā¦ āMorsi!ā You get bombed by a pigeon? Even thenā¦ āMorsi!ā
A decade later, here in America, our voters were pi**ed off at the price of eggs and riled up about the possibility of trans people in their bathrooms ā and we, too, have elected a radical and destructive new government that ignores past norms and constitutional limits to implement a so-called āmandate.ā To justify firing the dedicated public servants and non-partisan experts whose rarely-heralded hard work keeps things running smoothly and safely, the Trump White House has demonized Americaās institutions as the ādeep state.ā And, as the impacts of that become clear, I predict that we will start suffering our own āMorsiā moments.
When Muskās firings, justified by claims of waste, fraud, and abuse, lead to a tragedy at an airportā¦ when a natural disaster sweeps through a state, devastating the lives and dashing the dreams of people red or blueā¦ when ālegacy mediaā no longer exists, and the world view of a confused and frightened electorate is shaped by misinformation on social mediaā¦ when the VOC (Voice of China) replaces the VOA (Voice of America) to cleverly shape perspectives around the globeā¦ when the Department of Justice is no longer blind, but a political tool for a president with an āenemies listāā¦ when politicians are afraid to speak truth to power, for fear of their familiesā safetyā¦ when a surgeon general who is a quack ideologue doesnāt believe in science, and a pandemic needlessly sweeps across our nationā¦ rather than slamming our fists on the table and cursing āMorsi!ā, we will curse āTrump!ā
And perhaps then, if itās not too late, the electorate of the United States and our leaders will wake up, and weāll work in solidarity to stop this needless and heartbreaking dismantling of so much of what makes America truly great.
