Tian Iran Square

It's frustrating when there's an enemy that people just won't acknowledge, let alone confront. North Korea is obvious. As you know, because I told you, their radios don't have tuning nobs. There is only the one government station. An orderly society is a good thing. This isn't that. We should know the difference between order and insanity. It's not a subtle difference. Same with Iran. An obvious enemy. All that talk about us being the Great Satan should be a clue. The fact that this regime is mowing down its teenagers should be a clue as well. Well, I guess people are allowed to dispose of their property as they see fit -- as long as they don't pollute, I mean, or warm globally. And you will recall, as I informed you, Iranians are the property, the literal property, of the mullahs. So these two, loco NoKo and irradiating Iran, the axle of evil, rolling toward a nucleartopia -- obvious enemies, for all that the current and several former presidents have persisted in dealing ineffectively with them.

But what about China? What, you think Mao is dead? His spirit lives on. You know the spirit I mean. The one that quips, a billion dead here, a billion dead there -- pretty soon you're talking about real killing. My paraphrase, but the spirit is there. The Chinese politocrats are more subtle nowadays, more crafty in the phrasings of their little red books, but 5 million people will eventually have been displaced by that fantastic Three Gorges Dam they built up the Yangtze. A modern marvel! And as for Tibet, well, the Red Chinese gov is simply transporting the population out of their homeland and resettling Tibet with actual Chinese. Sound familiar? It's how Israel lost ten of its tribes. Assyria survives, it seems, simply shifted eastward. Where's the fun in being a tyrant if you can't shuffle populations around at your whim?

Ah well. It's only tyranny. So what. They buy the right to be monsters by selling us cheap kiddie wear and toys and plastic cups. WalMart is the x largest economy in the world, thanks to Chinese slavish labor and you. It's a good thing. Them little Chinese people don't need to eat very much, so what's the problem with earning pennies a day? All the more calories for you.

You're too young to remember, but once upon a time, long long ago, I wrote a little something in these pages about China. Not my best or most prescient, but I am not a prophet -- more of a doom-sayer. That's just me. Honestly, though, what's so bad about not having freedom? It must not be so bad, because we stand by and wink at oppression all the time. Who are we to save the world? Must be practical. And what free people has ever become slave? I can't think of any. That would be because there have hardly ever been free people, and those who have for a short while become slaves were later freed, by us. Tibetans? Do such a people exist anymore? Chinese? Iranians? North Koreans? Well, yes, of course they're free. The mind of every human being is a sovereign universe. We're all free. I don't know what I was talking about, or maybe I mean I don't know what I am talking about. Like Daffy Duck and his pronoun troubles, verb tenses just confuse me sometimes. It's part of being a prophet, which I am -- the present and the future and the past just keep jumbling together. It's strangely liberating, or would be if such a thing as liberation were needed, in a universe, the universe of my mind, where everyone is by definition free.

Then again ...

Don't you get tired of missed opportunities? This incipient revolution in Iran -- the revolution against the revolution -- it could scuttle the flagship of islamism. Doesn't that seem like a worthwhile thing to hope for? Yes, Virginia, there is a Domino Theory, and it works. We lost the Far East to insanity in the 70s. We reclaimed Europe and something of Central Asia after the end of the Cold War. Fecklessness is losing those gains, but we've seen what's possible. We ignore all quests for freedom in Ukraine and Georgia and Burma and anywhere else that doesn't have a powerful lobby group, but we've seen what's possible.

And now Iran offers a sharp silver sliver of hope aimed toward our brains, if we'll have it. Instead, the nominal head of our government swats flies to great fanfare, and announces his continuing hope for continuing dialogue with the "Supreme Leader." Perhaps he's thinking of Diana Ross? Alas, no, the honorific, said with slavish obsequiousness -- and that's not in poor taste because Obama has no slaves in his ancestry -- is uttered by your president as if it were appropriate to call a despotic fanatic a "Supreme Leader." I feel certain he will call Kim Jung-il the "Dear Leader" -- it's the diplomatic thing to do, given recent precedence.

When we have dispute in our elections, hanging chads go to the Supreme Court. When Iran has any such dispute, the Supreme Leader hangs the lads. Tah dah. But there is no difference in the equanimious judgment of our own dear leader. Hey. Dumb ass. Iran is going nuclear. Wouldn't it be nice if it weren't an enemy anymore? We had dumbass Carter to thank for its loss -- he, like Hamlet, couldn't make up his mind. Now we have dumbass Obama, mindless in the face of a demand that he act. We don't need a lot of enemies. Just pick one, and do something about it.

So I hope that settles the confusion of your mind. There are no enemies. There's only a lot of talking, with words meaning anything you want, and actions are just plot points on a story board. Life is a balloon.


J