The expected has now occurred: a massacre of Muslim Brotherhood supporters by Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi of such fierceness that he may well have imagined the cowed and psychologically seared demonstrators would return to their homes with their tails between their legs.
But the Muslim Brotherhood’s white flag is not in evidence. And as the arrests of the remaining Muslim Brotherhood leaders continues, the leadership of this, now, populist Islamist national protest will scatter and diffuse down to street level, with likely ugly consequences — not least for Copts who stood shoulder to shoulder with Sisi as he declared his coup.