It Is In The "We"

I came across a heady blogger via Naj at Iran Facts, she who keeps me on my toes and has provided me with many delightful, intelligent windows on her former country. (Which has become the country I'd most like to visit.) The site is called Sidewalk Lyrics, run by a "Pedestrian" who has walked down some penetrating pre- and post-election observations conveying the fun-house political mirrors which reflect between the United States and Iran.

The images come back distorted in some ways, but we both have suffered greatly from our Fundies and their collective powers in exorcising democracy. They have their progressives and conservatives just like us, and although the garb may differ, the dynamic is much the same. One token among many of fellow traveler-hood: hardly anyone in the US realizes that Iran is a constitutional democracy, and conducts elections from its city councils on up.

I've excerpted Pedestrian's post below, but if you have an interest in understanding our Enemy of the Month, Sidewalk Lyrics looks to be an excellent resource.

...there are times in a people’s history where physical laws of time and space no longer apply. There are times when the collective wisdom of a people seems to rise above what it was just days or even hours before. There are times when we decide as a nation that we will hope, we will want, we will attempt to do things differently.

HOPE is such a powerful thing. and I find that despite the fear and chaos on which this world is built, despite the greed and conceit that keeps it going, it is exactly these rare, unlikely moments that really keep us not just living, but alive. It is these moments that remind us of our humanity, our humility and of all that could be possible.

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This vote was not for a person, but a path.

I put my vote in the box, not because I like Khatami, not because I want another mullah as my president, but just for the simple reason that no matter how small and impossible this dream may be, even though I can’t see how or why it may happen, I can hope and pray that now, my country’s freedom will not - as some claim - have to wait for guns and grenades.

Maybe — just maybe — this time around, the ballot box will be enough.”

But what I realize now is that my one vote wasn’t enough. It is not the day of the elections, but the day after that makes all the difference. Political systems all around the world are built on mass manipulation and mass deceit and we can not expect them to function any other way. We are wrong and naïve to even hope that they will function any other way. We can not expect one man to alter a system that is as old as time itself and as powerful.

In fact, it is not in that one man that our hope should lie – but the collective wisdom we have been able to achieve as people. That is what we forget the day after the elections, and that has been our greatest defeat every single time.

It is not in he that change will come; but in the we.

Read the rest.