The Infallible NY Times

The NY Times and the rest of the delusional MSM are useful. Someone who’s always wrong is as useful to the astute person as the one who’s always right; sometimes more so because it’s so rare to find someone who’s always right. If you want to know the truth, read what they say and you can safely assume that reality and the story do not correspond. If the editorial page tells you that Mr. Smith is in league with the Devil you can be sure that he’s on the side of the Angels. If they tell you the sun rises in the East, know that the earth is now spinning in the other direction.

The ever-useful NY Times opined:

What should be clear to the Brotherhood, which, on Thursday, denied any plans to form an alliance with the Salafis, is that most Egyptians have no interest in swapping Mubarak’s secular dictatorship for a religious one.

For a clear-eyed look at reality, here's Barry Rubin:

Let’s figure out what the voting in Egypt means in concrete terms. What we have so far are these results for one-third — the most liberal one-third! — of Egypt:

Muslim Brotherhood — 37 percent

Al-Nour (Salafist) — 25 percent

Egyptian bloc (mainly the Free Egyptians Party) — 14 percent

Wafd (liberal, but willing to work with Brotherhood) — 8 percent

Al-Wast (moderate Muslim party) — 4 percent

Here is an analysis in graphical form that tells us just how much the NY Times is lying to you

Rubin again:

Basically, nationalism has collapsed completely. Liberalism is weak. Moderate Muslims are few. Radical Islamism is the only game in town. Remember that: no alternative exists to an extremist, repressive, anti-Western, anti-Jewish, anti-Christian ideology.

Thank you, President Obama and the New York Times!

Second: the third largest party is the Egyptian bloc, which consists mainly of the Free Egyptians Party along with smaller leftist and liberal parties. Much of its vote comes from Christians, meaning that the proportion of Egyptian Muslims who voted for Islamist parties is even higher than it appears, perhaps 80 percent by the end of the elections.

Where, you might ask, is the vaunted Facebook kids’ Justice Party? Or the supposed leader of the reformists, touted by the U.S. government as Egypt’s future leader, Muhammad ElBaradei?

Answer: Nowhere.

...these votes reflect the most liberal part of Egypt! The Islamists generally, and al-Nour proportionately, will do even better in Upper Egypt (the south).

Rubin makes the point that the Brotherhood doesn’t want to scare people before it has the government firmly in its hands. We are going to read many editorials about how “moderate” the Brotherhood is; how it is really a social movement that’s focused on eliminating Egyptian corruption, wiping out poverty, improving education, providing food to the needy. They know exactly how to play the Western MSM because the MSM wants to believe. Remember how Patty Murray told us that al Qaida was popular because they built schools?
  

What is so infuriating is that the end game is so utterly predictable. The MSM is telling us that if we collect enough cow patties we can use them to cook a great steak. What can you confidently predict will happen in a country with 50% illiteracy, where there is no history of democracy, where most of the women are sexually mutilated and Islam is the dominant religion? For reasons that can only be described in psychiatric terms, the NY Times insists that these are all the ingredients for a secular democracy.  Only people who are deliberately delusional believe this.

In February I wrote "Hope vs. Experience." I hate it when I'm right and bad things happen.

Note: the post has been edited.