Jefferjinidad?
Radbam June 16th, 2009
Art by Devlin Donnelly
Democracy…is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike. Plato, The Republic
Plato….not a big fan of democracy. The brilliant elitist who turned shadow puppets on a cave wall into cogent philosophy did not suffer fools well, especially those amongst “the people” whom his Hellenic homeboy Pericles empowered to serve as the governed and the government. Though at opposite poles of political perspective, both would probably lament together over a goatskin of wine to behold the exercise-in-need-of exorcist-in-democracy that is the recent tumult in Iran.
It was a desperate act of faith and relativistic suspension of standards to assume anything good or constructive would emerge from last week’s Iranian national (se)lection. The challenger, Moussavi, while a smidge more sane than the reigning King of Crazy, Ahma-jananddean-adad (as Colbert might say), still requires a Herculean effort of out-of-focus moral squinting to see as a Montesquieu of Mesopotamia. When what passes for radical reform is an admission that Jews died in Nazi ovens, the bomb shouldn’t be your economically beleaguered nation’s top priority, and socio-cultural mores should move beyond the 14th century, your country’s got a major “to do” list.
There is much tongue wagging, flag waving and holier-than-thou-ing about the overt and obvious corruption of the Islamic Republic’s electoral process. But in the U.S., generalized concern for the perversion of sacred entitlement seems overshadowed by the specter of our own flirtation with electoral subversion in 2000 and a desire to get it right for others. Politician, heal thyself!
There is a cultural and national arrogance in our absolute certainty in the good of democracy and its mystical power to transform the primitive into the privileged that transcends W’s ham-fisted attempt to inoculate the world with hot dog and Chevrolet free-cinations. Especially within the aura of pan-Islam fundamentalism, the raging anti-bodies of reaction quickly subsume the scant shoots of western-style liberty, not because it is wrong, but because it is western.
Be careful what you wish for in duly conducted elections, for you may actually get what the people want. Witness the election of Hamas in the Gaza strip. And while the recent Lebanese leadership lottery produced the promise of a pro-western government, it is more premature aberration than trusty trend.
Understandably, unfortunately and dangerously, most of the polis in the Moslem world is democratically illiterate, through no fault of their own but due to their tribal, imperial and colonial histories. They’ve been down so goddamn long under the thumb of powerful hierarchies that any democratic freedom looks like up to them! We should nurture and support any and all efforts in the Moslem world to evolve toward the good life, ladies with liberty and happy pursuits. But we’ve got much teaching and training to offer, along with a healthy dose of hope for the future and trust in our motives, before expecting the Jeffersons of Jidda or the Madisons of Mosul to break out in revolutionary splendor to the sonorous chorus of Star and Moon Forever.
It is human nature to trust the opinions of outsiders about oneself over one’s own estimation. The most famous prophet-from-another-village to stroke America’s tenuous sense of self was De Toqueville, who quipped
In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end.
The Iranian revolution continues, and we pray that the end does not take all of us with it.
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