I believe , this year 2016, we , as Arabs, have graduated from apathy to denial. Previously We couldn’t care what was happening to our society . Now we are in denial of what is happening to our society.
The lack of political participation and the lack of systems to carry change through and the narrow entrenched interests in the status quo made us resign to the fact that nothing “I” can do can make much of a difference.

Things had only one direction to go from there and they did , down hill.

Today as we see the civil wars erupt among us left right and center and see all the bloodshed and the inhumanity and injustice and misery we moved from apathy to denial. We deny what our eyes see and our ears hear. Its not us, these people can not be Arabs, etc… we all heard that argument that somehow this is not our fault that somehow it is not us that are doing these ugly horrible things to each other , that somehow we have been infiltrated , our will taken over. Why ? why do we need this lie ? simply because the truth of what we have become is too ugly to bear.

Do we really think so little of the lives of those around us , of those we call countrymen, that blowing them up indiscriminately is a valid tool of communication. Are we really that savage on the inside allowing our selves all sorts savagery in the name or religion, ethnicity. Sectarianism, power, money ?  It is much more comfortable to lie to ourselves than deal with the truth. We will continue searching for scape goats and reasons outside ourselves till we run out of blood to shed.
We seem to lack the courage to look inside and examine our beliefs. We seem resistant to   the logic that says,  starting with these sets of beliefs or values applied in  this specific  manner will lead me to reach a conclusion where I can justify doing these horrible things to people that I once called countrymen.
Our state is the result a surreal mix of traditions, religion, political injustice,  economic poverty for the masses, political elitism, ethnic and sectarian prejudices, education and money to the top 2%.

The sate can easily  go boom taking with it hundreds of thousands of lives and displacing millions forcing them to migrate because in my opinion it is not cohesive to start with. There is no justice in its formation.
Those in  political power , in every country that crashed , denied , to the last second, the people who were opposing them.

They were so used to an unfair battleground , thinking it is their divine right to rule that they only thought of relinquishing power when their own loss was inevitable and even then they tried to escape by some sort of power sharing formula that the other side no longer needed.

This shortsightedness and rigidity of the ruling class in Arab countries is a main reason why no smooth transition to another political formula was possible, fueling the chaos that was sure to follow,

Why ?

What makes them think they can rule unopposed doing a bad job of running the country ? Why do they think they have some divine right ? who put this idea in their head and who allowed it continue.
What makes our systems fail so miserably instead of adapt and change ?

The current Arab systems and the ones that have fallen are a product of colonial powers. Those who struggled for independence from colonial powers are usually the ones that ended up ruling the specific country. And as the colonial powers did not have the culture to ask those they lorded over for their opinion so did the guys who got rid of / inherited  from  the same colonial powers.

Our current systems , whether they gained independence by fighting  against or frolicking with ottoman rule, French rule or  British rule adopted the same view of the masses.

Their claim to  legitimacy of rule comes from gaining independence from a colonial power rather than the will of the majority .

We ended with very much an army backed political party or ruling family. In short a feudal / colonial system.
We seem to have missed the class where the government is supposed to be elected by the people to work for the people. Instead we have governments formed by the ruling class to maintain the interests and position of the ruling class. A top down approach to forming governments and managing the country.

There is no real feed back cycle for management of the country in this approach. Instead of the light and continuous give and take to manage the affairs of the country , it is the colonial idea of ordering its subjects around for what it saw fit for them and for it to maintain its power . The current governments only replaced the colonial powers.
Change for the better or worse  in this state of affairs can only come from the top, Only the loudest and most desperate cries of the people  for efficient management or  change are heard through the layers of bureaucracy that surround the decision makers , and the solutions are usually, ill studied,  handed from the top by inefficient but loyal managers to the status quo. Also usually  too little too late,.

This entrenched loyalty based rather than efficiency based system consistently  arrives at the wrong  answers. Exasperating and already desperate  situation.  making the governing system inherently inefficient and in the lack of effective management the only way the system can stay in power is through loyalty. a vicious cycle that ends up in instability.
For this system to survive  without the support of the majority whose lives are being negatively effected by bad management decisions  and outside support structure has to exist.

As with  their predecessors, the  colonial powers,  their support structure is external to the country they are governing. so in effect they are not held accountable to the people but held accountable to the outside forces that help them stay in power in exchange for narrow interests of the outside forces.
When there is no legitimacy to the government. And the government  knows  they keep running into all sorts of trouble and having  always and forever to defend their  right to rule by force . Thus the endless and sordid jail terms for political opposition .

Unable to absorb creative elements of the society ( who also are the disruptive elements to any rigid status quo )  , the systems of rule  Dealt with them harshly and exasperated the problems. Not a single government in the middle east was able to have a real opposition and harness that  creative power to the good of the country.

Not a single country in the middle east is without a sizable political prisoner population.
So how do we get a handle on analyzing our current state correctly. I feel there are two players involved, the people and the government. Each with their share of  of folly responsible to where we  are ending up .