More from the ‘Merica Machine: Egypt, do you know what your problem is? You aren’t ‘Merican enough.

Congresspersons Michele Bachmann, Steve King and Louie Gohmert traveled to Egypt and held a press conference. It turns out that they have all of the solutions to Egypt’s problems. Egypt simply needs to be more, well, more American. 

In this truly bizarre conference the Representatives of the United States Congress seemed to lose sight of the fact that, in Egypt, their audience isn’t full of fundamentalist, conservative Americans.  Seriously, watch the video from The Daily Show below.
 

Jon Stewart and Co’s befuddlement is orders below what I imagine the Egyptian peoples’ was. (The full video of the press conference can be found here ).

True to form, they were condescing from the get-go, like they were talking to children. Michele Bachmann's introduction set the tone: "My name is Michele Bachmann and I am a member United States Congress of the United  States of America." This preceded a bizarre parade of references to the American Founding Fathers and their infallible wisdom (from their silence, we are to assume the Founding Fathers agree with everything that is said about them).

 Let me clarify this: Egypt isn’t America.

I am sure most Americans would not take it kindly if someone from Russia or Germany came to tell America that we should act more like them and less like us.

Being American has a lot of benefits—children aren’t forced to work in sweatshop factories, we aren’t subject to an autocratic theological regime--unless these three actually get their way and make the US a “Christian” nation in which loving thy neighbor means telling them exactly what to do and how to live.

In Egypt, the people revolted and overthrew the rule of a dictator. In the elections that followed, the Muslim brotherhood took control of the government. The government then started to enact legislation that forced the entire country to live by the strict fundamentalist religious guidelines of their particular interpretation of Islam.

The funny thing about the three Congresspersons giving the press conference in Egypt is that they are very anti-autocratic Muslim law.  If it was Christian law that was being forced on to the people—in Egypt or in America—then those three start to sing a very different tune:

Steve King thinks that it is okay for a Christian to run over dogs as long as he apologizes.

Louie Gohmert thinks that not forcing members of the military to be Christian is infringing on their First Amendment rights, and that the Aurora shootings are a direct result of attacks on Christianity. 

And Michele Bachmann—there are far too many examples to quote. 

One of the benefits of being American that I personally forget to take advantage of on a regular basis is the right to be completely condescending to every other person in the world who isn’t American or Christian. 

Like Stewart says, someday Egypt might just figure it out and leave something that lasts. Something iconic that will be in people’s minds whenever they think of Egypt. Learn from America’s history because we are America and in American we have things that were built over 200 years ago.

It is a good thing that these three were there to guide the way.

In all of the turmoil of Egypt’s revolution-- and resultant election and then subsequent military overthrow of the government-- at least there is one thing in which the Egyptian people can take comfort: at least these there aren’t part of their government.