There is a cat in a box with a flask of poison. The random decay of a radioactive isotope is rigged to shatter the flask and kill the cat. We don't know if the cat is alive or dead.

According to the well-known quantum paradox of Schrodinger's cat, the cat is neither alive nor dead (or both alive and dead) until someone opens the box to find out, which disrupts the quantum uncertainty and resolves the cat's fate.

The citizens of the Middle East have long lived in a box of uncertainty. In Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Jordan, Algeria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, the people weren't free, to be sure, but neither did they live in chains, or so it seemed. Their monarchs were enlightened...on occasion. Their presidents held elections...which sometimes even included opposition candidates. Their newspapers reported...within limits.

Outside of the box, no one pressed too hard to resolve the uncertainty. We knew that Egypt wasn't America or Europe, but maybe it was just getting there slowly. Even Colonel Gaddafi and his sons seemed to be leaning shyly towards liberalization. At least, we could agree, Egypt was not North Korea. It wasn't a dictatorship-dictatorship.

But it turns out that the "quantum uncertainty" of global politics existed only in our minds. There are only two types of nations, democracies and dictatorships. Egypt was a dictatorship. So was Tunisia. So is Bahrain, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Jordan, Algeria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.

The youth revolutions of the past months finally opened the box. We can no longer pretend that the cat is neither alive nor dead. The dictators have been exposed one by one as corrupt megalomaniacal despots despised by their people. They have been forced to either abdicate or else throw off the cloak of the enlightened autocrat and expose the instruments upon which every dictator's authority invariably rests: guns, tanks, planes, and prisons.

The cat is dead. Long live the cat.