Pedestrian

It is times like this that I feel very much alone …

Who will put an end to this madness? Or is that what every generation asks itself before its eventual demise?

In times of protest in Iran, you hear the exuberant cries of rallies behind the protesters, offering them useless, albeit enthusiastic support. It doesn’t matter where you go offline or online: Monarchist rallies, sites with the nuttiest commentators ever, like iranian.com to dinner parties, almost everyone is ready to cheer on “the people”, declare their long distance, internet love “for the people”, send their virtual, hearts and prayers to the “people”. Yes, uselss perhaps, and quite irrelevant to what happens on the ground … but heart warming in a cheesy Hallmark-card sort of way.

For those living outside of Iran, this is perhaps a single moment of unity, where those virtual hearts and prayers allow us to feel a connection to “back home”, that allow us to cheat ourselves into believing that we too “have done our part”.

But in times like this, when Iran is hit by a new round of preposterous sanctions,  that will work to cripple the work of millions of ordinary Iranians, those very “people” we were crying for … those same folks, if they find time to take a breather from their Nachos and Prime Time television, cheer on the warmongering of the West, as if IRI’s perfidy justifies the evil perpetuated by their most powerful counterparts in the Western hemisphere.

We can criticize the IRI for its absurd handling of the nuclear issue in light of Western aggression they KNEW was all too real and ready. But that does not in any way justify this aggression.

More peculiar still that this cheer leading is done in the name of “patriotism”.

I don’t believe in “patriotism” so outrageously today associated with support for governments; where allegiance to a country becomes at one with supporting the perfidies of the political establishment … Nor do I believe any land or its people have my unconditional devotion due to blood lines … I do believe in the power of nostalgia, and the power of memory to draw you to the familiar, to ignite in you passion and longing and love. But I would have felt the same had I been born in Portugal, Japan or Chile. That doesn’t prove the moral “superiority” of one geographical space to the other.

But no matter how you choose to define patriotism, I don’t see how anyone living outside of Iran can bring themselves to support sanctions -  when they themselves will be untouched by them. The moral high ground with which many expats cheer on perfidy and evil makes me vomit. Are they a majority? Are they an overtly active online minority?

At school I’d like to think the latter. Students who have just recently left their homeland to study abroad, rarely forget the hardships their families (and they themselves only a few short years ago) had to endure. When you are in school, speaking to students who understand and remember what it is like to walk the streets of Tehran and Isfahan and Ahvaz … the world doesn’t seem too lonely.

But then I visit a forum filled with self-described Iranian “patriots” cheering on this madness, or I attend a dinner party, and it comes back, all over again. I can’t bring myself to support abuse and brutality imposed on any people … Iranian or not … by any government … Iranian or otherwise. How can they support the continued brutalization of their own people, from both ends? It’s all for the “Greater good” they say. “Some day soon it will help the regime fall and it will all be worth it”.

Go to Iran to experience the greater good, and then we’ll talk you fucking, delusional scum bucket.

And for those of you still confused by the latest IAEA report, please refer to the venerable  Seymour Hersh.