He's the nephew of the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM)'s Dear Father Leader Michel Aoun. He accompanied his uncle during his exile in France with his inseparable other useful idiot Simon Abi-Ramia. They participated in the founding of the FPM and returned with the Dear Leader from exile in 2005.
Alain the nephew has just been kicked out like a mangy dog from the ranks of the august party by none other than the mini-Dear Leader, the son-in-law Gebran Bassil. You see, after much promises of a new kind of Lebanese political party free of cronyism and family inbreeding for political positions, the FPM turned out thanks to Bassil to be yet another rotten Christian Lebanese party stinking of middle-age-vintage feudalism where, failing the much preferred traditional gonadal inheritance-by-sperm of power, bedding the Dear Leader's daughter and begetting progeny containing a fraction of the Dear Father Leader's DNA also qualifies in determining who the alpha male patriarch is at the top.
I always assumed these "cadres" of the FPM were all principled men who worked for the cause, not for the man. But just like many other useful idiots like Pierre Raffoul (Australia), Gaby Issa (US), and Tony Haddad (US), their principles were washed off in the chlorine bath that Gebran Bassil, the mini-Dear Leader of the party, set up for them after he soaked it in the stench of Hassan Nasrallah's robe and turban. Lured by his promises, the useful idiots embarked on reaping the benefits of their subservience to the Rasuptin of the Holy Family, Zebran Basij. They became MPs, ambassadors, ministers...., though some (Haddad) got nothing and were booted out of the inner circle like pestilential lepers.
When others, who had served the cause under Michel Aoun's leadership during his exile, discovered that Rasputin Bassil had hypnotized the useful idiots into upending their own principles for the sake of stupid and useless political positions for which they were not qualified, they quit. These others (Bejjani, Hitti, Zogbi, Nader, etc.) immediately saw in February 2006 where the unholy marriage between the FPM and Hezbollah that Bassil engineered would lead. They saw in 2006 that providing a Christian fig leaf to the Iranian proxies of Hassan Nasrallah will inevitably lead to the dismantling of the republic and the destruction that the country is facing today in 2024 due to the rape by Hezbollah of the Republic. They immediately quit with honor because the cause and principles required them to. They would not sell out to the enemy just to become president (Michel Aoun) or MP or Minister (Raffoul, Alain Aoun, Abi-Ramia...) or ambassador (Issa). On the other hand, those who were lured by Rasputin Bassil have ever since discovered their mistake and have been slowly peeling off the FPM adhesive or are being thrown out like trash like Alain Aoun. I do like some of the holdouts, like Ibrahim Kanaan, and I've often wondered when will he come off the Bassil wagon.
The FPM is disintegrating. Although formed around the persona of Michel Aoun, it had the potential to become a modern political party in this devastated Bronze Age wilderness that Lebanese political culture is. But Rasputin Bassil took it over and tranformed it into a cult of himself. He ruled it like an entitled autocrat with unlimited power, just because he sleeps (we assume) in the same bed as one of Michel Aoun's daughters. Just like the Gemayel farm of the Kataeb. Just like the Frangiyeh farm of the Marada. Just like the Lebanese Forces farm of the Geagea couple. Just like the Chamoun farm of the National Liberal Party and all the rest of them useless feudal neanderthals.
These are not parties with a defined ideology or program. Their only program is to worship their Dear Leader and ensure his access to power by becoming the next eunuch Maronite president emasculated by the Taef Agreement. They all share the same foundations: No ideological differences between them. They all kiss the ring of the Divine Lord in Bkerke and rule over a herd of ignorant Maronite peasant clientele in their little valleys somewhere in the mountains of Lebanon. Their main passtime is to constantly hurl insults at one another and bicker over who's going to be the next president. These feudal lords and the Divine Lord in Bkerke are in fact successfully overseeing the twilight of the Maronite community, now decimated by 50 years of wars and emigration and a growing threat from assertive Muslims with huge demographic advantages. And instead of uniting behind a well-thought common platform with which to negotiate from a position of strength the survival of the last free Christian community in the East and the next arrangement with the Muslims, their divisions and bickering have made Christian Lebanon the laughingstock of the international community.
How many times have the Christians of Lebanon been fooled and betrayed by both the Arabs and the West over the past 5 decades? And yet, like money-hungry fools, the Maronites continue to believe that the (otherwise secular) West loves them because they are Christians, and that the Arabs love them because they use them like bonded servants in the Gulf! You should see how the Maronites drool at the feet of the likes of Donald Dumb and Viktor Orban, or when they kiss the feet of Mohamed Bin Sultan and the other decadent monarchs of the peninsula. Always on the wrong side of history, and they wonder why they are constantly screwed.
I wonder what Alain Aoun is going to do now. Typically, outcasts like him go on to found their own branch or offshoot of the party, survive for a few years in the background, then vanish in Lebanon's political limbo. I suggest Alain call his offshoot "the Real FPM", just like that other "Old Guard" bunch of creeps. Michel Aoun's legacy of principles is no more. The FPM has become nothing more than a small band of devious Bassil cultists whose only raison d'etre is to make the Maronite Rasputin Bassil the emasculated next Maronite president of the Republic of Lebanon.
And right when Israel and Iran are preparing to tear this tiny piece of hell on earth into pieces, the Divine Lord of Bkerke is annointing more saints and dispatching truckloads of beatification dossiers to the Vatican. Producing saints on the assembly line has become Maronite Lebanon's core competence; it might seem archeologically cute and worthy of our benign complaisance, but in the modern world there is danger in ignoring a continued reliance on religion as a foundation of the Lebanese body politic. It is worth remembering Seneca's words: "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful." With religion serving as the foundation of political Lebanon, and with all the useful idiots around who want to be presidents, we all know where this is all headed.
No comments:
Post a Comment