When I was a kid reading Genesis in Sunday school or sitting around the seder table at Passover listening to stories about the children of Israel escaping slavery, my perception of Egypt, (5,000-year-old Egypt), was that of a powerful, ancient, forever kind of place. Pharaoh, Cleopatra, the mysterious pyramids, the sourceless Nile, the enemy who became the cautious peace partner of Israel; Egypt’s existence would never come into question…right? I mean, if Egypt can collapse, what about a country in its infancy, like the United States? And yet, as I write this, there are riots in the streets of Cairo, looters are trashing priceless relics in the National Antiquities Museum, the Mubarak government has disbanded and a directionless military is attempting to create order out of chaos.

How could this happen? How could the great societies of the Greeks, Romans, Phoenicians…crumble? The common thread in the rise and demise of these once great civilizations is the ever increasing chasm between the wealthiest few and the poorest, overwhelming majority of the citizenry and a hubristic mindset of entitlement by those few. When the carrot of hope and possibility is no longer even dangling before the masses, the result is…Egypt…or Detroit. I’m just sayin’.