Something that’s been sticking with me, watching the coverage of the crackdown in Iran and the overwrought reaction to it by the likes of Sullivan.
Indeed, Sullivan posts this today, quoting CSNY’s “Ohio”
“Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?”
And as mentioned in last week’s print edition, I spent my week off reading Rick Perlstein’s “Nixonland,” about the president and the turmoil in the late ’60s and early ’70s. That included Kent State; that included the riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968.
Watching coverage of the unrest in Iran, it made me think of the Chicago convention. And I wondered if the conservatives/neoconservatives who have gotten so choked up over the violence in Iran have ever considered the parallel.
We might say that the people marching in Chicago in August 1968 - the Yippies and others who wanted to stop the war in Vietnam - were somehow less serious than the marchers in Iran, or had less of a claim to moral authority. That’s not necessarily so; those who marched in Chicago believed in the need to confront what they saw as authoritarianism, a government which refused to accede to the demands of “the people.” People in Iran believe their vote was stolen; people in Chicago in ‘68 wanted their government to stop the killing in Vietnam.
And in both cases they were confronted by a government determined to maintain order, and they were assaulted when they refused to obey orders. In both cases, their opponents were the defenders of the status quo - which makes them, by their very nature, conservative (and yes, we know Daley in Chicago was a Democrat, though he was absolutely a cultural conservative, when it cames to issues of law and order).
So when Sullivan posts these words, it’s worth asking - would he have supported the students at Kent State, or in Chicago?
None of this is to deny the horror of what’s happened in Iran, though my own personal view is that whatever happens, it remains their country and not ours; and that it is not the place of this country to dictate how other countries should resolve their internal disputes. Had we held to that maxim over the years, our troubles would have been far less.
But as Daniel Larison has chronicled so ably, we don’t know exactly what the opposition in Iran would do even if it were to gain power. This notion that they are wonderful democrats who would be friends to America may well be wishful thinking. Moreover, we don’t know that the election actually was stolen, or whether Ahmadinejad wouldn’t have won despite the fraud.
The outpouring of emotion over Iran, then, is due largely to its status as charter member of the old “Axis of Evil” and the hope that “the people” are actually not authoritarian and Islamist, that they are really, deep down, just like us - fighting, as we would like to think we would fight. And that if they win, the problem of Iran might miraculously be solved - because surely people just like us will see our light of reason.
Maybe it’s a universal human reaction. But just because the protesters are out in force, do they really represent “the people” - as in, a majority of “the people?”
Did the protesters in Chicago?
