In November of 2011, I stood on a balcony in downtown Cairo with friends as demonstrators marched through the streets below. They chanted, we cheered – and in the wake of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s exodus from office, the whole city seemed swept up in the euphoria of a wide-open future.

Now, nearly 30 months later, that ecstasy has soured into disappointment and anger. Yet more clannish violence has rocked the nation – this time in the southern region of Aswan – and you have to wonder if there’s ever going to be an end in sight.

Religion, politics, class; every possible synonym for the word “tribe” is conspiring to keep Egypt in its downward spiral of stupid. Not that any of this should come as a surprise, though. This is the way it’s always been. From the Ayyubids to the Mamluks on through the Ottomans and the British, a vicious tribalism has been perfecting itself here for untold generations.

Everyone thought it was erased for a while – but with the common foe gone, the Muslims and Christians and Copts and Arabs and Nubians can all get back to their time-honored tradition of killing each other. And not all the well-meaning Western liberals and apologists in the world can talk it away, not with all the Colonialisms and Imperialisms and whatever other “isms” they can muster.

No, if the Egyptians want to navigate themselves out of this mess, there are a whole lot of cultural demons that need exorcising, and only the Egyptian people – not the Egyptian government – can perform the exorcism. Foremost among the spirits that need banishing: the tendency to bury the self beneath the warm body of the group.

It’s easy to understand why this tendency exists. Many family oriented, slightly insular cultures, clustered in one space, are pushed into conflict with each other by poverty, war and years of governmental fear mongering. But an explanation for the problem does not excuse it. And every time a member of the Muslim Brotherhood blames a Coptic Christian for the fall of Morsi, or a Copt blames a Nubian for the failure of his business or Nubians kill each other over an assumed grievance, that vicious tribalism will only grow more vicious – and more ravenous for blood.

There is no one government or military official that can be blamed for that. But there are plenty of mirrors. Maybe this is too harsh. Maybe this is dismissive, even borderline racist. I’m a blonde Mick/Pollack from Chicago, for Christ’s sake. Every time I buy a hot dog it contributes to global injustice.

Every McDonald’s, every Sears, every homeless person on the street speaks to my own culture’s demons, and every mirror makes it clear who is to blame. So who the hell am I to comment on Egyptian affairs? Well, I’m someone that fell in love with the better angels of Egyptian nature. Someone who remembers the date juice stands in Talaat Harb. The koshary in Giza.

The friends living in Luxor, Cairo and Aswan – the latter of which could very well have been the individuals killed in last week’s fighting. I’m someone who remembers the amazing courage and compassion and charity that the Egyptians – all of them – showed each other only so very recently.

And so also someone who’s tired of seeing a people he grew to love self-destruct, and then pass the buck for the bloodshed to whoever happens to be a convenient scapegoat at the time. Sort your s–t out, Egypt. You’re so much better than this.

Remember the signs that once dotted Tahrir Square: “Kulna Musri – you are, all of you, Egyptian.” I just hope you remember it before it’s too late.