Final Boss Form

How It Will Likely Happen

winstonwolfe:

negevrockcity:

While the worlds attention is diverted for the next 72 hours by the death of a faded pop star whose relevance outside of dark jokes faded 20 years ago, the Iranian authorities will go in like rabid dogs smelling fresh blood and feast on the flesh of tens of thousands seeking freedom. Then an Islamic Republic shorn of its democratic facade and mandate to rule will celebrate its newfound freedom by repressing the Persian masses by never before. Meanwhile, my American brothers and sisters will go back to Free Tibet bumper stickers and finding the next trendy cause.

I sure as hell hope not.

Tragic because it’s true

Tried posting this in the morning but work got in the way and I never hit ‘Publish’. I’m sure the conversation’s gotten longer since then but here’s my nickel’s worth of bandwidth:

Ugh. The original argument is so wrong and misguided that it hurts.

Here’s the problem with this particular instance of “you shallow Americans”: we’re not Iranians.

We’ve been brought up under several decades of American interventionism (the kind that leads to blowback and guys like Bin Laden) to believe that we ~~can~~ should have the ability to directly affect politics in another country. Do you know how fucked up that is? Do you know how much trouble that causes?

Pair this idea up with the influence we’ve built using social media in our own (Western) politics (elections in particular) and it’s easy to mistake our newfound “empowerment” as being universal. Sure, there’s a lot of bullshit to be said about encouraging freedom and expanding open culture but this argument isn’t about that. It’s about the noise we’re making in social media.

People in Iran will get their heads bashed in whether we tweet about Neda or we tweet about Michael Jackson. This is because we’re Americans and the only people who can truly change Iran are the Iranians.

Side note: don’t downplay the importance of Michael Jackson to the world at large. Set aside the pedo nonsense and the state of his marketability just before he died and you see a career of cultural influence and philantrophy throughout the entire fucking world that goes far beyond music and that, I would argue, far outweighs anything that a Mousavi victory would bring to Iran.