After the defeat of June 1967, frustration overwhelmed the Arab peoples and their elites, in a manner that went even beyond what happened after 1948. Frustration spread everywhere, in daily discourse as in literature and theater, and in intellectual analysis as in the press and television. Arabs were frustrated and for good reason. To be sure, that defeat, which routed three countries and three armies in six days, was humbling as much as it was shocking, and only increased in magnitude and impact with the fact that the one who was defeated was none other than Gamal Abdel Nasser, the idol of the Arabs, who had not prepared them for anything other than imminent pan-Arab unity and victory against the Jewish state. Moreover, those who were frustrated by the catastrophe of 1948 had relied on military regimes as a reaction, only for the setback, less than two decades later, to occur and reproduce their frustration as despair. This was the moment of nationalist frustration, or frustration with nationalism. Afterwards, the Palestinians would assert their Palestinian – rather than Arab – identity, as the path to "liberating Palestine." Anwar Sadat then separated Egypt from the pan-Arab narrative of Nasser. For his part, Hafez al-Assad reduced the unionist discourse of the Baath to focus on the mere defense and survival of the regime, as did Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Today, the Arabs are living a democratic frustration, or frustration with democracy. The brutality of the military regimes and the rise of political Islam succeeded in breeding and propagating the worst things about our communal and cultural makeup: In Egypt, a military-popular apology for the January revolution is underway. In Syria, the civil war and the regional-international crisis is swallowing the revolution. In Libya, the state and the revolution appear like two parallel lines that never meet. Perhaps Tunisia alone remains a glimmer of hope, but it remains faint and at risk. And even if it should become a fully-fledged hope, the position and role of Tunisia limit this event's ability to gain a cathartic pan-Arab dimension. The Islamists and the military have succeeded, with backing from the worst features of our historical experiences, in slaying the revolutions of the Arab Spring. Most probably, we will soon be face to face with more of the pervasive conspiratorial thinking, and perhaps more nihilistic radicalisms that proceed to fragment societies that are not in want of further fragmentation, along with Bonaparte-like attempts, either tragic or comical, to sell us salvation through the military. In truth, the former nationalist frustration would have been healthy, in that it would have brought the Arabs closer to the reality of their countries and states, to realizing the difference between abilities and slogans, and to taking the world into account when calculating the balance of power. This only happened partially and in extremely awkward ways. As a result of its not happening, something that was exploited by tyranny and militant faith, layers upon layers of crises and contradictions accumulated, and the 'Arab Spring' now had to confront these. Yet the coming frustration is even more dangerous. Indeed, it does not simply declare the collapse of everything, regimes and revolutions, secular and Islamist alike, but also declares that there is no cure in sight, and that the supposed theoretical treatment is countered by an allergy afflicting the body, preventing it from accepting it. Ideas and societies could be racing to return to the zero state: The first collapse as they are dominated by a debilitating and total agnosticism and the second collapse into raw components that can only be attained through much blood. Reality is unbearable, change is at an impasse, and those who say that the worst is yet to come are not lying.
