People want the world

Dear Ms. Sohrabi,

I am writing to you because I just read something of yours for the first time on Iranian dot com and thought about writing back. I then went to read the rest of the things you had written, but soon gave up, because it is now early in the morning, and I can’t be fucked to do proper research that would do a different kind of justice to your call.

Meanwhile I know that if I don’t write something right away, it might be indefinitely deferred like so many other things, and so I will nevertheless write, and with that I will posit that saying something no matter how obnoxious, is better than not saying anything at all out of fear, respect, or any other bind.

What I would like to pick up out of your argument is the bit about the referendum. I have also been thinking about this for a while now. While I have to give credit to Reza Pahlavi for putting this “ear worm” in my ear, yet it is so basic of an idea that is clearly far from any “higher” thought out of any sort of kingly or noble mindset… it is common and commoner’s sense. To find out what people want, ask them. As far as it is something dealing with commons, then, it is also immediately within the firing range of the learned academy.

While everything within the academy would also be open to dialogue and debate however, a pedestrian notion such as a referendum, is but practice props and small game for budding intellectual powerhouse-tigers. When training to rip texts apart and glue them back together looking for truth, women, or Socratic wisdom, from the microscopes of Aristotle and the political schemes of Plato, to the world wars and post everything, even engagement of such ridiculous child-play is nostalgic and retro undergraduate longing for enlightenment and reformation, revolution or whatever.

Nevertheless you have humored the common pitifulness, and so will I, just for fun, and between sips of gin (now without tonic.)

Speaking of what I am drinking, I just read again the very first page of Shafa’s translation of the Goethean divan (“Divane Sharqi”) The very last line on the page is Shafa’s translation of an unpublished poem by Nietzsche entitled “Question of a Water-drinker,” (Shafa leaves the title out, and this English title is mine.) It reads — translated from Shafa’s Persian: “Your Word itself is the Drunkenness-Giver of the Wise in the World. Hafiz, why do You want Grape’s Wine, to do what with?”

But as you say in your writing, I digress.

There is a parallel drawn between the revolution of seventy-nine in Iran and the “referendum” that followed it on the one hand; and this buzz mainly emanating from RP, but also from others, even on the streets of Tehran today and for some time now, on the other.

Speaking about the streets of Tehran, I am reminding myself of the common areas of common sense. Common sense intellectualized is a sort of a weird theology that looks for reasons behind self-evident senses, but it is a comic one because at the end of it the basest of commons win, and things go on in the stupid figure of a perished American new-comer. No tragedy, no matter what anybody says. The winners are good guys, and good guys win, comically. It’s so fucking gay! Things indeed tend to repeat themselves, but not in the fashion one might think. It is about the eternal return of not the same, but its equal, “dessen gleichen”.

I am sure you won’t disagree that all the various secular and nationalistic groups and even Marxist and other leftist groups, all at some point agreed to agree overtly or covertly on having the Ayatollah from Qom as their leader all those years ago. And following that there was a question put to the people, where the choices were either Yes to the Islamic Republic, or No to the Islamic Republic. This election was not monitored internationally, and did in fact not follow even the guidelines of the United Nations.

Now, the intellectuals, – that is the older generation of Pahlavi-bashers of various denominations – who were acquainted with various intellectual catch phrases out of the universities founded by the two last Shahs, did know the positions of the Ayatollah and were aware of his agenda, at the very least since his great publications in the sixties. These texts were however not critically engaged; a critical engagement with them was deferred in the name of resentment against the Pahlavis. This was the revolution that surprised all its very own rank and file.

Things are indeed repeating themselves again. No one gets a straight forward answer about what this fantastic new intellectual concoction of leftist idealism and Islamic Reformationism has planned for the serious problems that the young in Iran are facing. Criticism is mounted instead mainly by other well-to-do Iranian-Americans, against a middle aged politically engaged house husband, one time heir to the last Iranian Shah (d. 2539, 1979, 1357,) now living in the U.S.; and against the heart-breaking circus of exiled commoners in California that hasn’t developed a voice.

These intellectuals are joined of course also by Old-school European Marxist-lights and Islamic Reformationists and their Calvin’s and Luther’s. This time, this spoiled brat, whose father’s death at least some 20 million people around the world had hoped for, (and many had audibly called for;) this common man whose illiterate grandfather had marched into Tehran and crowned himself Pahlavi the first, Reza; this “dars nakhunde” according to Dr. Banisadr of the Sorbonne, (whose mouth possibly smells of vomit still in his old age;), this nim-Pahlavi is now writing books, and speaks those mundane meaningless words, such as referendum and secular democracy.

There is a story about a son of the last Sassanid monarch’s reception by the King of China, – something that might be further researched in the history of Tajikistan, I don’t know – but that is not the one amongst many recurrences I pick up on certain frequencies, to which I wish to turn here…

Before there was no critical engagement with Khomeini, and what his programs (and pogroms) were, and now, apart from a fundamental lack of trust in the syntax and semantics (“it’s no secret that a liar, won’t believe anyone else”) leading to summery rejection of the hermeneutically saved, read intention of the author, there are no serious criticisms of RP’s proposed ideas. No engagement with the text.

This all may appear to be the same thing, “das Selbe,” but in fact it is not the same; rather, it is its equal, dessen gleichen: “Die ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen.” Yes, yes, we are repeating ourselves… But there are always new translations of Zarathustra.

So, the genetic, hereditary claims are now framed within an almost undetectable artwork of intellectual sophistry. His father’s son he is, and his father was a murderous dictator that
surprised the would-be suicide blonds and suicide bombers and suicidal political cults, by dying in Saddat’s, a dead-man’s, a dead-friend’s, Egypt. And of course then there are the suicidally perished, “Die Verschollene,” or as it is translated, the” America”. Emperiaalisme-Jahaankhaar-Gooyaan-e Aalam Mottahed Shavid!

Now as far as the logistics of a “multi-staged,” “internationally observed,” ” free and secret,” “voting and voicing one’s opinion” goes, there are ways of preparing for it somewhat systematically, (and if your interest goes beyond Pahlavi-bashing, you could get in touch with me and we could talk more specifically about this; if not, you could also get in touch with me and tell me about what a stupid idea the referendum is, and how RP and Shah Abbas Safavi both suck.)

But these are all strategies and words, and I have enough political history on the shelf here to be able to talk until cows come to rule. What about 18 Tir? There was no revolution I read in your writing. I unfortunately do not receive these hated Californication channels, but am familiar with what they are, from visits to my parents in California. I can tell you that the programming need to improve, and some sort of professionalism required; but the trouble is that no one who can do something does anything. But let me come back to the California dreaming later, let’s get back to insomnia in New York for a bit.

As Iranian-Americans, we might want to stop and reflect on what happened four years ago to our fellow students. In doing that, we might meditate on what it is that they want, and what it is that we want them to want, or perhaps on why should we reflect at all. But since four years ago, Iranians, both within and without the republic have come to increasingly be aware of the date, and have also tried to voice what they want in remembrance of the date.

On the necessity for dragging the war into politics and learning to win and lose politically and in one polis; on this, there seems to be a consensus; despite the lingering and retarded battle-cries for conventional and futuristic war-fare, from all sides by the tiered and the slow witted. So, people are becoming vocal, and at some points violent, but eventually they are hoping to be able to voice themselves and vote.

Displace the violence elsewhere. But why vote to vote? Particularly when one can instead investigate the 28 of Mordad some more, to gather more proof that it’s all the work of the British, and the CIA, and RP and of course last but not least, Khwaast-e Elaahi (which always lingers in the background of all our fears and resistance to what makes us insecure; a power we cannot take on, and should either love or hate.)

In John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, there is a part about respect, and those who demand respect for something or other. And of course then the respect factor turns into a political bargaining chip, it becomes an argument. But who sets the rules of the discourse? What is respectful to say, do; what is the respectful way of inflicting violence; what is not allowed in the public or the republic? There is a reporter that they killed and quickly buried; we know of her, because she was Canadian; we wouldn’t know of her if she were merely Iranian; because we are busy bashing one another, and have no respect for ourselves, our history, who we are, (and other things I won’t bore you with. You know it.)

The reformists themselves are waiting for the next coming of reform because they think it dead and are still religious in their age of modernity. And it appears from what I gather, (not from LA TVs) that people want the world, and they want it now. Now? Now!

Now it is past 8, and I can’t possibly be coherent, so I’ll stop. But before that, I’d like to thank you again for trying to rally people on the internet. I know that rallying people is very difficult. I actually wanted to talk to you about the fear that stops one from coming out and saying what one wants to say. Human beings can adapt, even to the Islamic Republic, provided two youth’s brains are served to the snakes regularly from amongst those who didn’t get their BS and took off for Canada.

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