Please elaborate
On Democracy and Freedom

Omid Farda Manesh
May 23, 2006
iranian.com

Guive Mirfendereski's "What democracy, what freedom?" was in response to my letter to Iranian.com titled "Unsettled" that received from the editor's of the Iranian.com a heading of "Counterpoint".

After reading Guive's prose, my mind at beginning endured numbness from our international law lecturer's punch lines such as "Zeki", "No shit", "what kashk, what mast", "tavalod, tavalod, tavalodat mobarak, n-bareh!", "Either shit happens or doesn't happen", "dandan aryeh", "kabob", "Ajab", "O, no?  Watch me", "Good luck", and so on. With BA, PhD, MALD, MA, JD and possibly more in his backpack, I sensed abnormality of not finding dependable political elaboration of concerned issues, and then, I wrestled to find a center of gravity to respond objectively. However, it was futile and ineffectual. As I revisited his text, his intention became visible more as self served and egoistic.

"Polemic" is the art or practice of inciting debate. A debate could be either to enlighten or bewilder audience, in our case here in this site, viewers. However, I found his retort not enlightening or bewildering. It appeared more of a channel exploited on that day to discharge his aggravation of either a sex rejection of a night or nights before or just getting up from the wrong side of his bed, or both.

My "Unsettled" letter published on that specific day seemed to be the most challenging conduit to his appetite, a proficient individual, for privately emitting the built up ejaculation energy with fingers on keyboard of his computer backed by confidence of his credential of being a professorial lecturer in international relations and law. His prose only seemed as an indicative of Iranian's abrupt tumultuous emotion because of deeply ingrained Islamic dogma religion in many of us flowing out most often as a cyclone of twisting agonies!

It may seem pun intended here! Apology offered. Nevertheless, I have been occasionally a reader of his articles on this site. He should be certain that he has my most respect for his original and structured articles. I still have a copy of his winter salad recipe on our cooking file and enjoyed his recommended wines plus his revealed interesting roots of some English words coming from our mother land being one of casual topics of a social tête-à-tête once or twice with few close friends.

The predicament with his retort was that it raised certain complex issues such as democracy and freedom as shades of gray and set out to examine them, yet in a brief line length or less touch of "clarification" on the issue ended as if they were a black and white one. Of course, a "gracious" on-line "kashk" at the end was offered!! In his prose, an argument or position was hardly analyzed or articulated in its own right. It was apparent that the argument was attacked only as an emanation, reflection, or his signature.

In simple, it just happened that my "Unsettled" article as became his designated target while flashed into his view then the world wide web - and with it his ego - assumed strength and definition on that particular day.

The only sensible issue Guive offered was a reference at the end to the need of our populace (mellat) for a change from within. With backward religion beliefs so much entrenched in us, this desire is pointless. Let me point out again here that the deprived and working class Iranians being at the suffering level of Islamic Republic of Iran's ill economy will be the driving force for future change, but generally they can not become enlightened from within by themselves.

During the course of elevating to a highly developed society, our existing and future cream of the crop to lead our suffered unprivileged masses need to go through comprehensive transformation of becoming enlightened by and large, so that whole new transformation can ensue for Iranian society.

I have one request from Mr. Mirfendereski here and that is to elaborate in depth on Democracy and Freedom as start. If he decides so, it may increase my understanding and those willing on political issues based not on egoistic signature of his rather on objectivity structure of the subject matter itself. Trust me, we have had plenty of "Zeki" and "kabob" to date and this is where we are today with IRI as our system and Ahmadinajad being our "president"!

Let's create a constructive, encouraging, and informative medium here for continual debates on these fundamental and intricate political issues. As it appears, we Iranians have a long and bumpy road ahead of us.