Really? Not Really.
by C. L. Cook
Call it Alice Through the Looking Glass, or the more familiar tale of the Emperor's New Clothes, but casting an eye about this mad world lately one can't fail notice the magnificent disconnect between what is presented and accepted as real, and the obvious.

 

Emerging from the years-long nightmare of George W. Bush, and remembering the desperate reality-denial the reign of Bill Clinton necessitated, what truly astounds now is the incredible cleaving onto of the Obama change myth; even as that fantasy pops like so many soap bubbles before our eyes.

 

Peace, progress, plurality: Pop. Pop. Pop.

Foremost is the greatest: Hope. Mantra of the Man, Obama makes believers of the jaded multitude. More than want of money is the craven desire for just a pin-hole in the dark, a needle's worth of light let in to penetrate the gathering gloom; a reminder of brighter days possible to come; if not for ourselves, then for God's sake, for the children. But failing to be provided even that, the Hope addicts imagine their own supply.

It's pathetic to witness. Terrified as sheep, the people start at shadows, ignoring the wolves devouring the flock from the perifery; an odd one here, an intransigent one there. Disappeared: Civil liberties, freedom of expression, right to privacy; securities of the person vanished as though they never were.

But surely this president, or that prime minister, will turn things around. Won't they? Can't they?

No, they won't. They can't. There is no hope of some them, or her, or him altering the disastrous course already charted. Republican, Democrat, Tory, or Whig, they are merely stewards of this behemoth, this doomed Titanic madly steaming. These servants of the system scramble topside, infighting and manoeuvring for the deck-chairs, while keeping a sharp ear cocked for orchestrated opinion and a wary eye on the conductor.

Barack Obama, for all his grandiloquence, is not Captain of this ship. Neither is pawn Ahmadinejad king, (nor his Obamaesque "Hope" election campaign message any more real for Iranians than the original is/was for Americans). Only fools still believe individuals rise and rule alone. Obama certainly didn't do it. Ahmadinejad didn't. No-one does. But, millions wanted to believe it would be that easy, if only Obama was president of America; and they still do. Maybe some believe too Iran would be different, if only without president Ahmadinejad? This despite the obvious fact Ahmadinejad's perfunctory status is official. Being a face without a voice in the operation of the state is every president of Iran's job description. Iran is not ruled by the president any more than the United States of America is, but denying this simple fact is promising another great carnage in the name of sacred democracy.

All A-Twitter

Today, the endless repetition of these idiotic delusions by lying media in hopes of whipping up a static storm to cover the ultimate destruction of Iranian society, sowing again chaos, as accomplished in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Somalia, and throughout the sphere of American influence in the Middle East and Central Asia continues, abetted by the tech du jour devices, Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube. In times past, corruption took a little time to take hold; now, the rise, flowering, and fall of the novel occurs almost simultaneous. Twitter, it's now revealed, was instructed by the U.S. government to forestall a scheduled maintenance shut-down, concurrent with the Iranian elections, so the breathless "real" reportage from the Iranian streets could go ahead; helped along by western spook agencies and their operatives in corporate and state media.

Though fooling some pretty savvy media operators, most notably the iconic DemocracyNow! and the array of late night comedians cum pundits, events in Tehran are largely a product of clandestine internet interventions by the usual suspects within the CIA, MI6, and Mossad. The machinations of these three horsemen of apocalypse are, via the Twitter social network and other devices, playing on the restlessness of Iran's young population, and the familiar fantasy of a change to the oppressiveness they suffer at the hands of the largely corrupt Ayatollahs.

It won't happen.      

None want to own the fact: What they see is what they get. Farce. Those who for the most part are ruled over will ever eat last, ever live most poorly, and never know justice but as a cruel joke, regardless of the governor's name or face. All that will change for Iran for now, and for the rest of us soon, is an escalation in death and bloodshed. And all of it for false promises based on phony premises.