Trego's Mountain Ear

"Serving North Lincoln County"

Tag: iran

  • Voting Yourself In

    After the shah was overthrown, the Iranians had a choice. They could vote for a monarchy or they could vote for an Islamic republic. The vote came out for an Islamic Republic, and it’s on the 47th year.

    We’re seeing some major demonstrations as the Iranians work at getting out of the Islamic Republic. The problem is probably written larger there – the 75 cent word to describe the Islamic Republic is theocracy. We’ve heard the Ayatollah denouncing the protesters as ‘Enemies of God.’ In our British history, King James (yep-him of the King James Version) was the last Brit King who totally believed that he ruled by divine right.

    One of the problems of democracy is that you can vote yourself into something you have to shoot your way out of. Forget the dangling preposition – I really don’t know a way to say it better and more grammatically correct. The problem with shooting your way out is that authoritative regimes try to keep a monopoly on the guns. The Iranians – people whose parents and grandparents voted them into the Islamic Republic – want out. The government has the guns.

    We are not always offered clear, good choices in an election. The record shows that 98% of the voting Iranians chose the Islamic Republic. Then they knew of the problems with the Shah. Now they know the problems associated with the Islamic Republic. They’re trying to demonstrate their way out because they can’t vote or shoot their way out. Their choice, though they did not realize it, was between a crap salad and a crap sandwich.

    We can’t sneer at their 1979 choice – out past three elections have only been a choice of the lesser evil. I voted against Hilary Clinton. I voted against Joe Biden. At the bottom, my decision was made on the second amendment – push comes to shove, our founding fathers wrote the ability to shoot your way out into our constitution. The people we see demonstrating and dying in Iran don’t have that right. Few nations do.

    Should the Iranian people be successful, I have a hunch we will see a return to Zoroastrianism. Two thirds of Iran’s mosques are closed. The experience of living in an Islamic Republic seems to have turned off the appeal of Islam. Before the Iranians took to the streets, they quit going to the mosques and answering the call to prayer.

    You can vote yourself into a government that forces you to shoot your way out. James Madison is credited with writing the second amendment. So far we haven’t needed it – but we’ve seen a lot of attempts (and some of them successful) to infringe on the right to bear arms. The second amendment is now the strongest it has been in my lifetime – because of a man who received my vote but not my support in 2016 and the people he appointed to the Supreme Court.

    Thinking about the Iranians, again I remember Terence McSwiney and hope his view is correct:


  • Thus Spake Zarathustra – One More Time

    I’ve never before been tempted to steal a title from Nietzsche – but the furor in Minnesota, the street riots in Iran, the raid in Venezuela, and who knows what else may occur before I post this.

    It applies more to the rioting in Iran – Zarathustra founded Zoroastrianism – the Persian religion before Arab conquerors brought Islam into the country that we know as Iraq. The present rebellion is symbolized by attractive women setting photographs of Supreme Leader Khamenei on fire, then lighting a cigarette from the flaming photo. Apparently, its illegal to burn Khamenei’s photo, and Iranian women really aren’t allowed to smoke. The guy on the media said this was becoming a symbolic part of the revolution – and its possible that they’re right.

    I didn’t get into reading of Persia and Zoroastrianism from reading Nietzsche. The author who dragged me into the topic was a brit poet named Fitzgerald, who loosely translated the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Khayyam had a verse that motivated me to read of both Islam and Zoroaster:

    Myself when young did eagerly frequent
    Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument
    About it and about: but evermore
    Came out by the same Door as in I went.

    And this I know: whether the one True Light,
    Kindle to Love, or Wrath consume me quite,
    One Glimpse of It within the Tavern caught
    Better than in the Temple lost outright.

    Oh Thou who didst with Pitfall and with Gin
    Beset the Road I was to wander in,
    Thou wilt not with Predestination round
    Enmesh me, and impute my Fall to Sin?

    Oh Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make,
    And who with Eden didst devise the Snake;
    For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man
    Is blacken’d, Man’s Forgiveness give—and take    !

    So I read of religions – and, like Khayyam, usually found myself walking out the same door as I walked in. Islam lacked appeal, excepting the Sufi teachings. Zoroastrianism was written up as an essentially dead precursor to Judaism and Christianity – yet a little more research showed that it still lives in the religion of Yazidi. Big point of this is that Zoroastrianism still exists among the Yazidi and the Parsees (India) and there are a whole lot of fire temples still operational (well, 150 in India, anyway). Not a worship of fire – but the idea that fire is a symbol of cleaning, of ritual purity, and that a sacrifice through fire leads to happiness.

    The talking heads may be right. The burning photographs that light cigarettes may be the symbol on their own – but Persia spent a long time as a center of knowledge, and Zoroastrianism did stress fire as a cleanser. Thus spake Zarathustra. I even stole Nietzsche’s end line.