As a foreign student in the United States, in spite of thorough indoctrination by the communist propaganda in Iran on young people like me to abhor America, the spirit of some features of the American constitution gradually seeped through the dark crevasses of my mind and turned on a few lights of enlightenment. I gradually and subconsciously developed some sort of ambiguous, at first, love and hate, and later a warm affection for America. Meanwhile, the political atmosphere of the country of my birth that has nurtured me became intolerable under the despotic regime of Shah, who had been brought back to power by the United States as the result of the CIA’s coup of 1953. In the interim, living in America spoiled me with the proposition of individual freedom and a mild but right dosage of individuality. In other words, I developed a point of reference. Inevitably, almost unknowingly, I adopted America as my father.
Inescapably, the eggs laid by the dragon of 1953 CIA coup hatched and the monstrous chickens came home to roost; a bloody revolution of 1979 took place. As consequence the relationship of my mother and father deteriorated to a point that for over the past thirty years they have loathed and have been on each other’s throats in the process of a nasty divorce. I have felt like a wounded orphan, have gone through mental anguish, suffer immeasurably, and perpetually have wondered when my father with 236 years history, (a juvenile) and my mother with 5212 years history, (oldest country on earth) would come to their senses, make up and live in peaceful coexistence. My suffering increased when I learned that 81% of my fellow Americans, brainwashed by the war drumbeats of Neo-Conservatives, believe that my mother country is number one threat to America’s security. I realized that my father is about to bomb my motherland to oblivion, just because the supporters of an infant country, Israel, paranoid to their eyeballs have high-jacked the foreign policy of my fatherland under the blind eyes of their citizens, that my father has planned to participate in wiping out my motherland from the surface of the earth. In the midst of all these horrific jumble of thoughts related to what is about to happen, that history is going to repeat itself; the reoccurrence of Iraq’s tragedy, it dawned on me that the unprecedented commonalities between my mother and father’s country are so numerous that a military attack will be the most ridiculous act of violence one nation can perpetrate upon the other. It will definitely be so destructive – a sort of suicidal act that will irreversibly disrupt and destroy lives of my loved ones on both sides – as this divorce continues on.
My depression elevated immeasurably when I focused and itemized a few of so many surprising commonalities and similarities between my parents:
* My mother country fought the fascist forces of a despot in 1979 and toppled his regime. However the new regime has approached every social, economic, political and cultural problem with a fascist solution – violence. On the other hand, my father country fought the fascism in Europe and in the Pacific, paid high price and won. Unfortunately, oblivious to its homegrown fascist forces based on belligerent nationalism, coined as “Exceptionalism”, (another nice word for supremacy) prescribes violence as the solution to a wide range of problems, especially international ones.
* My father is adamantly serious about spreading its version of bastardized system of government globally via violence, a system of government that its framers hoped to evolve to a “people’s participatory democracy” someday, but unfortunately has resulted to a well-oiled machine of corporate democracy. Similarly, my mother wants to spread its most inhuman and backward version of Islam around the world via the same method.
* In my mother country, the forces of promoting ignorance, fanaticism, fascism, and anti scientific facts have been ascendant steadily, especially since the success of the 1979 bloody revolution. The same forces are at hard work using every deceitful and unethical method to capture all three branches of the government in my father country.
* Every institution (such as education, health care, safety net regulations, governmental rules to check and control the greed of the financial institutions … etc) that guarantees the future well-being of my mother country have been under vicious attack by men who wear turbans. Similarly, the same institutions in my fatherland are under viscous assault by men who wear ties.
* All the existing rules and regulations in my mother country favor less than one percent of the society. In my father country men and women who happen to be “anti whatever is wholesome”, only promote the well-being of the one percent to the detriment of the remainder.
* The election process in my mother country is subverted shamelessly. In my father country it has been sabotaged by the thoughtlessness of only five men in Supreme Court who upset established judicial precedent by ruling that corporations can contribute limitless amount of money to the election. As consequence, the government officials can be purchased in an open public auction.
* My father’s society comprises of many ethnicities as is my mother’s. In both societies the ethnic groups are always used as escape goats for the ills of the countries.
* My parents both believe Capital Punishment is the remedy to crime with the exception that my mother uses the execution also as response to dissent. It does not even scratch their conscious that they are in the top five countries in the world for the use of capital punishment.
* Due to the deformities of my parents’ cultures, an alarming number of my family from both sides, are infected by the disease of drug addiction. My father’s remedy for this illness is long incarceration for the users, and my mother’s is execution.
* Both my mother and father’s societies are extremely religious; religions based on the same origin, the same stories. They both fundamentally believe in existence of some sort of a phantom residing in space besides God. For the true believers in my mother country, it is a messiah, an Imam, the Absent One. And it is Christ, for the true believers of my father’s. Sadly enough that vast majority in my motherland truly believe that phantoms will come down to straighten our ills very soon. On the other hand, majority in America believe that they have been selected by God to police and straighten out the world. As a result they are convinced that their way is the best way and fits all cultures in the world, yet has very little knowledge of other cultures.
* The vast majority of my father people detest their dysfunctional, up for sales elected (often worse than selected) government officials. Similarly, the overwhelming portions of my mother’s citizens hate their delusional, deformed, and cruel selected government autocrats.
With all the existing commonalities and similarities between my father and mother, I keep wondering why there are so much unresolved animosities between them, especially when they are both fundamentally on the wrong sides of all issues confronting the human race. Why they don’t get together, to make these two countries and the entire world worse places than they are already, so that us bewildered children can endure more miserable lives?
AUTHOR
Majid Amini has authored seven novels. His latest work is “Children of a Lesser NationM”, published recently. He is co-founder and the Chairman of the Board of Photo Emission Tech., Inc. – a high-tech electronics manufacturing company in Camarillo, California.
