By Mohammad El Sahily | Staff Writer
With the passage of time, Lebanon continues to produce surprises and disappointments, all to the ever-increasing frustration of a dwindling number of people. A few weeks ago, a surprising government decision to not transfer to daylight savings time caused mass hysteria and, worse, turned into a pissing contest between “Muslims” and “Christians”. People from both sides of the debates revealed extensive talent in whipping up the most disgusting of reasons to attack their fellow Lebanese citizens. Not only is this dangerous and cause for great worry, but to the outsider it reveals how deep we are in our hateful cocoon.
It’s funny that our people, who are supposed to be “examples of tolerance”, were almost never tolerant of each other throughout this country’s short history. At the first chance given, Lebanese go up in arms, literally and figuratively, against an “other” who is no different from them except by religious affiliation. We originally came to be as a country when sect leaders devised an arcane and unwritten social contract which rests on proportional power sharing between the main sects. When the demographic or political balance tipped one way or another, we turned our rage, and weapons, inwards against each other.
When the government decided to not move the clock by one hour, as crazy and outlandish this decision was, it revealed scary sentiment amongst the Lebanese. On the one hand, some Christian leaders grossly overreacted, recirculating language that was used in the civil war. On the other hand, some Muslim leaders took to the extreme end of the spectrum, decrying the Christians’ sense of self-importance and using all sorts of disgusting language, too. This resulted in the amplification to voices which varied from calling for partition all the way to the establishment of a caliphate. This is all beyond shocking.
Never mind that the dollar has reached astronomical levels. Never mind that over 80% of the country’s inhabitants are below the poverty line. Never mind that more than 200 people died in an explosion whose perpetrators continue to be reelected, even facing mountains of evidence regarding their corruption and culpability. Never mind that are in an unprecedented political vacuum, and that a bunch of warlords continue to dictate every major change in the country. When a recent episode of “Sarde After Dinner” with Dr. Makram Rabah aired, some people harped how their version of history was better than the other.
I see no end to our preoccupation with trivial and stupid matters. I can go on for hours listing the stupid things we fight about. Yet, restaurants remain packed, people fight amongst one other over anything, and our crisis shows no sign of abating. As you can see, this is beyond frustrating and demoralizing. Is it hard to convince people to tackle what matters in life instead of the baiting happening around them? It would appear so. We are, mostly, a stupid people in a stupid country ruled by useless tropes that will probably plague us until this country is no more (hopefully not too far off).