W. B. Yeats Had it Right.

    Corrupt and ineffective regimes persist as long as they do only because people tend to be apprehensive towards what might replace them.  The devil which you know is always preferred to the devil that you don't know.  In the last 250 years, most of the old corrupt institutions of power have been overthrown, often to be replaced by even worse arrangements.  And this lesson has not been lost on any who've watched it.
    In the last dozen years, few people, inside or outside of Egypt have been particularly enamored of the Hosni Mubarak regime.  Yet who can know what will actually replace it, and whether it will be an improvement?   Yeats had it right:
   "What rough beast, its hour now come round, slouches toward Bethlehem, waiting to be born?"