don't know what to think...

(Like many other in the country, I'm home today. We got enough ice to make roads a hazard, so my university closed for the day).

I've been watching the Egypt coverage off and on. Right now, they are showing tanks or APVs going into the square, trying to round up the protestors. (I thought, "It's Tiananmen Square all over again," except, it really isn't, I don't think).

On Saturday, I said I hoped I was hearing a democracy being born. It sounds more to me like civil war, or an armed coup, now. I'm sad for the people of Egypt who want freedom. (And I admit: scared for the Coptic Christians, who will probably have a very bad time of it if the Muslim Brotherhood gets power).

I don't know. I can't watch too much of this stuff because it does make me scared and sad. I don't know if I don't have the perspective some people do...even though I'm in my 40s, I still am somewhat young - and grew up during a historically less-eventful time (well, until the fall of the Soviet Union, and that was a more positive thing).

I remember commenting to my mother how fearful I had been after Sept. 11, 2001, and how I felt for a few days as if the world might be coming to an end. She nodded, and said she had felt the same way during the Cuban Missile Crisis. (And she would have been younger at that time than I was in 2001 - younger, fairly newly-married, still not at the point of planning a family with her husband yet. I wonder if she wondered if she'd ever bring children into the world).

Part of me goes all Eeyore with news stories like this, and figures the world's done and we're just waiting for God to stick a fork in it. But part of me is still hopeful, and remembers that there's been bad rioting and violence in the past (heck, pretty much the history of Europe until 1850 or so was civil wars and a certain amount of brutality).

But I don't know. I continue to hope and pray that some good leader, some person of principle, will come forward and be chosen by the people, and that he (I think, in Egypt, it would have to be a "he") will govern well and not lead to problems for Israel or the U.S. or other Western nations. I don't see anyone like that right now, but I still hope...