Stoopid Stuff

Day of Reckoning

Like the cylinder of a revolver smoothly rotating to place a live round under a cocked hammer, the last piece of the seemingly inevitable collision between an authoritarian leadership that has finally crossed a red line they never even knew was there and a seething young population who only want what other young populations want, not even anything so profound a true democracy but only to sing and dance and love in the springtime of their lives has fallen neatly into place. The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khameini offered to his people a sermon today, in which he told them they must not only accept the blatant fraud imposed upon them even while they had faith that their system, limited and claustrophobic though it already was, was fair and did not fear a leader they could elect but who would never have real power, but to continue to merely stand on the street in silence was to invite beatings, arrests and even death.

It is entirely unclear how this will pan out. Perhaps, under the threat alone, the demonstrations will lose steam and fade away over the next couple weeks without further bloodshed. Perhaps the demonstrations will continue, and in the power of their numbers and their compelling silence the security forces will refuse to murder them, and something historic will happen. Perhaps in a brief, terrifying paroxysm of violence and horror the institutions of a state that finally chose to take off the mask and reveal itself to be the dictatorship it has denied being for so long will crush the "Tehran Spring" moment, ending for a generation the hopes of the population to make decisions about their own lives without intimidation from their government.

What does appear clear is that, after a week of posturing, maneuvering and shadow-boxing, the tipping point has been reached. Tens of thousands of Iranians will take to the streets on Saturday, seeking to be heard, asking only for the rights they have grown up believing they already had. And they have been warned - they will do so at their peril. In the recent history of authoritarian governments, it has frequently been the case that they only fall when they fall victim to their own lethal combination of hubris and paranoia. When they react to popular discontent with overwhelming violence and abuse of their power. When they force the people into an understanding that there is no longer anything to lose, and popular outrage turns into a bottomless anger more powerful than fear. Sometimes massive killing works, but it's always the last desperate gamble of a regime bereft of all credibility, seeking merely to cling to power for the sake of power, offering no reasonable explanation of their actions, only fighting and killing the only existential threat that ever ultimately matters - their own people.

The Americans who wave pompoms and shout from the sidelines when peoples are finally pushed past the point of acceptance, be it Georgians or Iranians, are wrong. We have no dog in this fight. These people aren't necessarily standing up for some kind of nebulous political philosophy such as the American political right has so toxically fetishized. They have been forced to acknowledge that their leadership has so degraded their personal liberty that they have no real future, no hope of living the life they desire, and their concrete demands are not for a political system, but for a chance to make a living, raise a family and live the way they wish. Understand, for this is important. They don't WANT to be Americans. They WANT to be Iranians. When even that became impossible, they went to the barricades.

Tomorrow we may find out what destiny has in store for them...

posted by mikey @ 11:54 AM