“Egypt Military Flexes Muscle Against Morsi Amid Rallies”

This is way too much, and too many people are celebrating it too much:

“The Egyptian military stepped up its campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood on Friday, as officials announced the possibility of serious criminal charges carrying the death penalty against the ousted president, Mohamed Morsi, and hopes faded for any sort of political accommodation with the Islamist group.”

And my AUC colleague Emad Shahin is probably right when quoted in the same piece:

“‘This is a preparation for eliminating the Brotherhood,’ said Emad Shahin, a political science professor at the American University in Cairo.”

My own view is that Morsi did enough bad things to lose legitimacy and be ousted. But the death penalty? It’s a bit grotesque even to raise the possibility, isn’t it?

Next problem: the MB spent 60 years under severe repression, which under Nasser was even the severest of repression. If they are about to be “eliminated,” they will sense the storm coming, and will probably not take it quietly. And that means that the Army is probably planning the harshest of pre-emptive moves. Today’s call for mass protests in favor of the Army may be calling for popular legitimacy for something almost unbelievably harsh.

There was something really golden about the February 2011 Revolution. And some of that goldenness still glittered even through the events of July 3. But it’s been harder to keep track of the gold in the past couple of weeks.