Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood rejects Cabinet offer

[Igel]

2. Why?

This kind of thing is exactly what the National Salvation Front referred to as full cooperation and evidence they wanted Morsi to succeed. Bail from elections, don't run candidates, don't attend meetings when invited, turn down positions in the government, support anything that stymies Morsi.

And call it, to thunderous applause, "full cooperation."

This continues the same kind of attitude. There was a chance that first year to dial back on the polarization. But what good things Morsi did were treated as cynical ploys and rejected with strong condemnation, and his mistakes magnified and taken to be permanent even if he reversed them. After that the polarization was monotonically increasing. The opposition could do no wrong. Morsi could do no right.

This rupture in civil society has been carefully nursed and nurtured when it served one side. Now it's going to be inconvenient and the other side will be blamed for allowing it to happen.