Today's Empires, Tomorrow's Garish Newspaper Headlines

The title is a play on a Propaghandi record called Today's Empires, Tomorrow's Ashes. As a statement, it's so vivid that it makes me want to get it tattooed on me somewhere despite finding the band that penned the disc almost hopelessly sanctimonious.




I'm not excited by the media frenzy around the death of Michael Jackson. The biggest dent he made in my life was New Found Glory saying Thriller was their favorite song. For some people, his death is huge, the end of an era in American music. It's the end of an era, for some newspapers and people. The response to his death from my politically minded friends (well, one in particular) was "Why are you talking about Michael Jackson's death, there's tons of other death and violence out there that's less fashionable and newsworthy that deserves your attention."

She's right, but ultimately, what does a Twitter update or Facebook update regarding Michael Jackson mean? Twitter and Facebook updates are not the places for screeds and getting across huge ideas, so I'm willing to let people have their venue, but more than that...Michael Jackson's life deserves a careful examination, since I believe there's an example of American existence in his life.

At a young age, he was forced, with his siblings to go on the road for America's entertainment, became a breakout star, became famous on his own due to that monstrous work ethic that was pounded into him by his father and then something snapped. By the time something snapped, he released some of his best music and had made his stamp on the pop landscape, so that his eccentricities were just cute foibles until they got creepier and creepier.

Neverland Ranch is a pretty obvious statement, for a guy that had his youth stolen to dance in front of other people, this is a man that wanted to be a kid, which isn't so strange and then something finally snapped. It's important to remember that when we're talking about him. Something snapped and he went nuts.

And by the end of his life, he owed lots of money, living in a space that cost him $100,000 a month and died after promising a huge amount of work in the future. Sound like any mation you know, living beyond its means with a negative bank balance?

I don't want to obscure the bad things he did, but this is a person with a tragic arc, who'se life I was only around for the obviously self-destructive parts of. He achieved a level of fame unthinkable today and a fanbase that despite the last 20 years, endures. That fact alone is so complex, I can't begin to unpack it.

And now he's dead.

So, if that death helps you understand or personalize the end of an era, or get a little bit closer to the idea nothing lasts forever, then I view the Twitters, Facebook status updates and MySpace blogs as legitimate and just as worthy as chirps about Tehran. That doesn't mean one ought to pay less attention to the recently cracked down protests in Iran, (it seems the guys behind the guns have won, but at a cost) but that it takes time to process the death of someone who'se importance in pop music is nearly impossible to overlook and a knee-jerk reaction to it is perfectly sensible.

Nicholas Kristof, journalist and small time saint, said in a youtube Op-Ed that Americans don't really care about numbers, but personalize a story and they'll care and that, I think is a useful lens to view the inane Tehran OR Michael Jackson debate (that I must admit I fell into) through. We can have both and more importantly, we ought to have room for both events. We can leave open a space for the riots and murder of kids our age in the streets halfway across the world, but that space doesn't preclude another space for confusion and distress over the death of an artist who'se music was a touchstone for literally millions of people.

I can't visualise a million of anything. Except maybe, maybe grains of sand on a beach. I know that we're all so tiny in the grand scheme of things and we influence different people we are around just by observing it, but hell, it's okay to express sadness and confusion over someone who'se life has affected you. I guess that's the takeaway message from this, that it's okay to feel strongly for someone who doesn't know you.

Yes, This Is About Tehran. No, I Have No Idea What To Do. I Just Don't Want More Kids My Age To Die.

Despite the fact that much of what you see below this is about the war/crackdown in Tehran and Iran, I'd prefer not to run my mouth about what Iran needs. I'll explain.

Portions of Tehran are burning and people my age are dying for rebelling against a rigged election, standing up, throwing stones and setting fire to cars. I feel helpless to stop it. And it's something I can sweep to the back of my mind. But then I read analysis from David Corn on Mother Jones, a person I otherwise trust, who says that the ruling parties in Iran, a.k.a the rulers keeping kids my age down, are really only going to be unseated by a lot more bloodshed and it might have to come to a full grown war for the government to change. Do I really want to stop it?

Think about that sentence. I mean, hell yeah, I'd like to see less people my age dying. That's usually uniformly a positive. That said, I don't feel like I know enough about the situation there and what it means in the context of Iran as a nation or group of people to feel comfortable speaking. Normally, I'd run my mouth talking about how the government, a group of thugs, held together by an Ayatollah and strong religious faith, is cracking down savagely on people who feel the election was stolen, who put faith in the veneer of democracy and that kind of crackdown is something that's better suited to CIA-backed war criminals than Iran, but that was before I read a book called We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families. That said, the government of Iran is showing another one its faces and it is, yes, hideously repressive and murderous.

One of the most disturbing portions of We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families was the response of the international community to the crisis. They showed up, not knowing anything and made it demonstrably worse. The UN run refugee camps were places where the pawns and hatchet men in the genocide went and ate the food and drank the same liquids that were running from them were. The international peace-keeping forces had orders that restricted them from getting their countries embroiled in the conflict, so soldiers watched through a fence as more Tutsis were killed in the UN run refugee camp. No one discharged their weapon. They were good soldiers.

I'm not Vulcan, so it's not like I feign exquisite control over my emotions, so when I see videos like these (#9, a video of a wounded girl dying is something I admit I haven't watched yet) they pull at my heartstrings. No. That phrase doesn't seem quite right. Those videos grab me by the shoulders and ask What are you doing about this? and the answer is so far, terribly little. I can talk about it on Twitter, Facebook and other places. But, I'm one tiny person. What can I change? Even if I could change something, what would the results be? Would the results be good for the people in the streets? The actions I take have consequences.

I'm mindful of the fact (or socially transmitted fiction) that support and solidarity for the kids in Tehran is terribly chic now among people my age who are insincere in other aspects of their lives and I'd like to avoid that pretense, if possible. I guess I'm trying to write all this without judgment or invocation of a moral high ground.

And I don't have direct control over shit. It's not like I can call up Obama or a three-star and have boots on the ground in hours. (Plus, we're still at war in Iraq.) The decision is not mine to make. Period. Tt's not like it was ever my decision to make, but I think that's the wrong way to look at it. It's what we make with the decisions we have and the tools we're given. I'm not doomed to watching updates on my Twitter feed.

As weak as the mechanisms of American democracy are, I can still use them. It might not be much of a message, but I have to imagine that a college age kid getting up before 8 a.m. to call a senator or representative's office has to have some effect on whatever intern or office worker is manning the phones. Here is a list of your senators and their phone numbers in D.C. Do what you will with it. Ditto for the House of Representatives.

More than that, I can ask the people in Iran what they want. Apparently, there's a well known (and respected?) blog called Iranian.com. There's directories of Iranian bloggers out there, here's just one directory, plus with Twitter and communication tools, a couple minutes of searching on Google will probably avail you something close to home, emotionally. That said, Twitter isn't always accurate, so beware.

I'm not sure what to tell my Representative or Senator, though. I'm thinking of just asking that they look, a lot harder, at the history of Iran and where and how U.S. assistance would help the kids my age protesting the best. The CIA and Iran have a long, long history together, and most of it is CIA-sponsored coups, because the leader in Iran wasn't pliant enough to U.S. interests, so I'd like to avoid that, if possible. Whatever will help those kids install someone they trust that will foster a robust system that is accoutable to the people of Iran, I'd like to help them with. I just don't know what that is quite yet.

Anyway. My thoughts are with my peers risking their lives, and even though I don't believe in God, if volume of prayers count for anything, here's one more for the kids on the streets.

Allahu Akbar.