On the Shores of the Sea of Green

Yesterday evening, as I enjoyed a dinner on our back patio of our suburban home with my wife and two children, it occurred to me that instead of dining on leftover roast chicken and sipping a French rosé, I should climb onto my roof and shout “Death to the dictator!”

Consider this scenario:

It’s exactly one year ago, during the American presidential elections. President Bush and Vice President Cheney have decided that the risk of another terrorist attack on US soil is too high and the security of the county can’t be entrusted to Obama or McCain, so they suspend the election and continue their terms indefinitely—all in the name of national security. Street protests erupt across major American cities. The police, the National Guard, even federal troops are called out to quell the violence, but protesters continue to defy authorities, and the casualty counts begin to rise.

Do I leave my wife and two young children to join the protests in downtown Chicago? Do I risk getting shot, beaten into a coma, or arrested and then beaten into a coma, to defend American democracy?

Do I allow my wife to go?

I ask these questions for two reasons. The first is the typical Western bourgeois guilt about rooting for other people to charge into the breach in the name of human rights as I cheer from the very safe sidelines of the American Midwest. I hope Iranians continue their pressure on the regime, but I have nothing at stake myself.

The other reason has to do with how I’ve experienced the events in Tehran. I joined Twitter a few days ago after my post on Foucault in Iran was spread all over the world on Twitter. (I’m @rmprouty, in case you want to follow me.) I’ve been following the uprising very closely on Twitter, and the view is much different than the accounts in the New York Times and the Washington Post. The Twitter feeds are dramatic and vivid, full of breathless speculation about activities in the upper reaches of government. The newspaper accounts are just the opposition, blandly conveying official statements from the IRI and noting tersely that people are dying in the streets of Tehran.

Twitter, I’m finding, is unusual in another way. Dispatches from Tehran (from a few moments ago: "yesterday we saw a 10 years old child die from teargas in his face") are mixed in with puns from David Pogue, random quotes passed on by David Allen, unfailingly cheerful distiches from Jaime Oliver (“I'm on the Steve Wright show later, hes such a lovely guy top boy”), and updates from my niece on her move to Chicago. The juxtaposition of the reassuringly mundane with the highly dramatic echoes the experience of watching a revolution on a sunny summer day.

I’ve never seen anything like the events of the past few days. I just hope I never have to go through anything like them.

Comments

[Mano]

Hello, again! Sorry about not letting go of older posts! Actually I'm always having difficulty catching up with the progress of the work here! ...
Strangely enough, even as one suddenly feels courageous and clear sighted about what one has to do, one doesn't necessarily dispense wholly with the two embarrassing detractors, namely fear and concern (which are by the way distinct from one another. The former I shan't try to deal with at all; in the midst of mayhem it's hardly ever felt primarily about others, and that's more or less that.)
The concern one might feel is different. It may not be concern for anyone in particular. Ultimately not just you or your fellow protester but even the adversary may not suffer unnecessarily, otherwise all may as well be considered lost.
The sea of green you, dear Richard, portray is always there, in partial view. Hamlet must have wavered between the two opposing positions pitiably, and to have been intensely conscious of it, to voice his dilemma so eloquently in the soliloquy to be or not to be, etc.

[Richard Prouty]

I'm mostly sorry that the Iranian government has gotten the upper hand, at least for now. It really looked like the authorities were reeling there for a while. It will be a shame if so many people suffered for such a modest goal--to have their votes counted--only to have that demand rejected.