… but those ideas are pretty old.
Today we see the will of the people,
Being twisted and conformed into cloying treacle.
By consent or force, it does not matter,
They’ll take all we are and serve it on a platter.
I’m not disagreeing with you but I think what we see is a minority of people with the protests. It seems like there is not really much political will to change anything from the half of the country with a penis, and the older females.
The whole thing is pretty sad but from my understanding when things like this happen they generally blame the west and the majority go along with it.
Honestly as a westerner Iran is pretty irrelevant to my life. It’s not like we can invade them or force them to overthrow the government and if we did people would never shut up about it.
Look at Afghanistan the USA spent so much money trying to spread liberal democratic ideas, integrate and educate women but as soon as we left they went back to how it always was. There is no civil war, the majority just consented to the Taliban rule.
Yeah, absolutely, it is a minority. But I don’t think it’s entirely irrelevant. The clergy used religion to twist and conform the will of the people, turning their views into Sharia treacle. Human suffering is relevant in an empathetic way, but it’s also good to know that human society can look like Iran with the majoritys support. Western society could end up in as bad a spot as Iran, all it takes is a revolution. There is a growing christian theocracy movement in every western country. Disillusionment with western capitalism and democracy is as high as ever and as things get worse, theocratic dictatorships become more and more appealing to more people. There is a non-zero chance we could have our own Iranian style revolution in just a few generations.
I agree mostly. It’s like North Korea, I can’t really do anything to change the situation. My government can’t change the situation. We can try to push some buttons to help foster change but we can’t force it. Change has to come from within.
Have you listened to the it could happen here podcast? The first episodes(the story ones) are pretty good.
Edit specifically this episode but you should start with episode 1 for more background.
If you listen to anti-imperialist analysis by Iranians, it’s never been “Western disillusionment”. The West has always brutalized Iran, stolen from them, murdered them in droves, and destroyed their national self-direction. Nothing saved Iran from the West until the theocracy emerged and purged all of the Western influence. Iranians have the benefits of their own labor and their own resources for the first time in centuries because of the theocracy. And I don’t think any of them think theocracy is the pinnacle of Iran’s potential, but neither are they ready to liberalize until the West falls.
Edit: Frankly, your whole contribution to this thread reeks of orientalism. In your world view, the Iranian people have all had their brains wrecked by authoritarian religious freaks and they’ve become disillusioned with the former vision for a civilized West. This implies that Westoids are normal people with functioning brains and that the problem is limited to some “bad guys” in the West that ruined it by being greedy.
The reality is so different from the delusion your worm-eaten brain conjures up. The West has been mushing the brains of its people for centuries and the entire Western project has been to destroy, murder, pillage, and extract everything it can get its hands on with zero respect for life, dignity, truth, culture, or anything that makes life what it is. The West has been a fanatical death cult for centuries. There is literally no way to criticize a country like Iran the way you do without exposing yourself as a completely propagandized subject of said death cult.
I don’t like the oppression of women nor the elevation of religion either, but that doesn’t mean I regurgitate Western propaganda.
