It's no secret that the Lebanese live in a dysfunctional state, where its treacherous parliamentarians won't hold quorum to vote for a new president and government is in shambles over warring interests. What's more, Lebanese political parties openly confess to being lackeys to foreign countries who have their own idea of who needs to take the presidential seat. And while we don't like to talk about it, we Lebanese still reel from the effects of the civil war and its ramifications 40 years on. The same warlords who took up arms to fight for this or that cause today form the hegemonic political class.
Although the Lebanese are known to bemoan everything, Twitter has become another space for them to vent off their frustrations. Friday morning, and after the government's decision to postpone talks about the trash issue until next Tuesday (basically, we're going to be swimming in shit all weekend), the Lebanese Twitterverse wondered what it would be like if there was a real Lebanese state:
"The youth wouldn't have travelled and worked abroad."
"The mafias and those who steal from the people would be in prisons and the bloodthirsty criminals would be hanged."
"You wouldn't need to ask for a thousand favors to get into college or have access to jobs."
"We wouldn't have to beg the banks for loans to start a project, and the worst thing is that we'd be forced to pay back triple the amount."
"There wouldn't be so many people [living] under the poverty line!"