CAIRO — Posters of Defense Minister Abdel Fattah al-Sisi outnumbered all other trinkets sold or distributed during the street celebrations for the 40th anniversary of the October 1973 War. The day turned into "Sisi Fest," rather than a celebration of Egypt's armed forces, during which a campaign for the general's presidency found large numbers of supporters.

It was just in July that Sisi and the army’s proclaimed disinterest in the post was used as evidence against referring to the removal of President Mohammed Morsi as a coup. At the same time, the military’s intervention was hailed as necessary to prevent possible bloodshed. On Oct. 6, however, there was none of that. No one was calling for a civilian president or state during festivities juxtaposed by deadly gunfire. More than 50 people were killed, and Egyptians either cheered or found justification for it. The reaction to such deaths has been the same since some 1,000 people were killed in the dispersal of pro-Morsi sit-ins and subsequent clashes in August.

When the military-backed government was formed in July, Mohamed el-Mahdy was appointed to the new post of minister of transitional justice and national reconciliation. Today, no one is talking about reconciliation, and those who do are ostracized. The consensus on the best way to deal with the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists is through the heavy hand of the security apparatus, including unlawful killings, arrests and loosely justified detentions. Reports of torture in prisons and other abuses do not find an attentive, alarmed audience, but numerous justifications. The interim cabinet recently approved a draft law, disputed during Morsi’s term, restricting the right to demonstrate and strike.

It seems that somewhere between June and August, the country and its people lost the plot, their own plot. The political aspirations that fueled their opposition to the Morsi administration appears to have been forgotten, or sacrificed, along the way.