Political Rumblings: Iran

Like the rest of the world, I've been following the election fallout in Iran, which is admittedly much more life-or-death than anything I could possibly complain about in my own life (like how to find a man who isn't gay, or crazy, or hocked up on pills, or hiding an explosive secret - which nine times out of ten is the gay thing unless it's the "I didn't realize it would be legal in Vegas" thing) and it occurs to me, as I continue reading these live blogs and watching videos, how very far removed I am from true political revolution.

Truthfully, as a kid, my ideas about life outside the United States were pretty skewed - as in, without the aid of that newfangled interweb, I imagined other countries like movie sets from 1930s, where villagers wandered about the cobbled streets singing and curtseying to one another and then hiding from the Nazis, like an obscene version of The Sound of Music. This I blame on an adolescence spent in the deep south, where "what are you doing Friday night?" was usually answered with"depends on how much pot you have;" life as a result moved like maple syrup, and was generally humid and unchanging and blonde and fake-tanned and much, much preferred to any other style of living - a culture sustained inside a snowglobe. Anything outside of it was therefore wrong, or lesser, or an other. Like on Lost. I sometimes liken it to the way I felt about Amy Jo Young, the varsity cheerleader who sat across from me in English, who in my band-geek brain was so confident and smart and athletic and awesome that I wanted to punch her in the face with her own hairbrush; Southerners, similarly, always worried that they'd have to defend their popular awesomeness against a perpetually jealous, hairbrush-wielding Universe.

I'm now years removed from South Florida - although I still occasionally find myself at war with the me who lived for years in that palm-tree, douchebag filled snowglobe; the me who has since become acutely self-aware of all acts of douchebaggery - such as my inability to quit complaining about the endless construction on the A-C subway line, or why God has apparently set a plague of rain upon New York City (five days in a row? Really? Are we in biblical times?) meanwhile in Iran, citizens everywhere are rising up in revolution, being thrown into jail or being beaten in the streets for problems that are actually REAL. And so I find myself wishing I didn't have as many fake problems (guys who whine, guys who spend too much time with my dog, guys who are teachers and refer to the children as "those annoying little motherfuckers") and could do more for Iran in a way that is real - although thus far have only come up with adjusting the color on my Twitter avatar (please see How To Start a Political Revolution in 140 Characters or Less, Bitches - page 3 of the Twitter FAQ).

But I also keep picturing the 2008 presidential hulaballoo - how passionate we all were; how my friends and I distributed "Yes We Can" buttons to anyone who would listen; how we posted viral videos of Barack Obama on the campaign trail and marched peacefully in protest of Prop 8. I remember the dual lines of voters that stretched from Broadway and 86th to 8th Avenue and beyond, onto West End Avenue; in the midst of cut pay and brutally cold weather, we all ditched our day jobs and stood on line for several agonizing hours to vote and make our voices heard. And later that night, when we realized that we could, in fact, make a difference, we all made our way down to Times Square, where a joyous crowd had gathered, and we clapped and honked and cheered and hugged and behaved in ways that, on any other night, would have gotten us fucked up and sold for cash in Chinatown. But instead, we were part of something much bigger. The freedom of voting, of making a choice both individually and together - gave us hope.

And THAT, my friends, is why fair election is so important - freedom of choice is what sustains a nation, and the desire for it will always be more powerful than the need to terrorize. So welcome to the 21st Century, Ahmadenijad. Wake up and smell the Twitter.