Galt's Gulch

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  • Posted by $ jlc 8 years, 5 months ago
    My father was an acquaintance of the Shah, and a friend of his Minister of Finance (I have some good stories) and the changes that have occurred since that time were incredible. It is not the 'Muslim' part that changed, it is the social culture that switched from modern to 'fundamentalist'.

    If the religious fundamentalists gained control of the US, one could imagine this happening to us but with a Christian theme. Happily, we have so internalized the culture of racial and gender realization that it would be more difficult than in a country that was still, as jimjj put it, "near stone age".

    Jan
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    • Posted by $ AJAshinoff 8 years, 5 months ago
      its a snap-back consequence. The more people denounce Christian ideology in a nation founded by Christianity (among other things), the stronger the course correction when the power shift occurs (for whatever reason). All of this can be avoided with a degree of mutual respect and tolerance. Sadly, it seldom is avoided.
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      • Posted by $ jlc 8 years, 5 months ago
        I agree. About half my friends are Christians. I sometimes accuse them of being militantly tolerant Christians. (The man holding my right hand in the circle at a pagan wedding was an Episcopal minister.)

        Jan
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    • Posted by johnpe1 8 years, 5 months ago
      Jan, do you have any inkling about why this shift to
      fundamentalist views has occurred? -- j
      .
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      • Posted by $ jlc 8 years, 5 months ago
        No, johnpe, I struggle with this question: If I understood why it happened in the ME, I might be better able to assess the chance of it happening here (with Christian fundamentalism).

        The best I can come up with is that humans seem to prefer an inaccurate certainty to an accurate uncertainty. If desperation for certainty becomes great, then you are willing to accept increasingly absurd requirements (such as "Blow yourself up.") to shore up a feeling that 'the universe is KNOWN'.

        Jan
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        • Posted by johnpe1 8 years, 5 months ago
          so we prefer Heaven to agnosticism. . delusion to facts,
          many would translate. . makes perfect sense to me! -- j

          p.s. Heinlein dealt with this when he reported that the species
          would be extinct if parents' delusions about their kids
          didn't prevent them from drowning kids at birth.
          .
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          • Posted by $ jlc 8 years, 5 months ago
            Chuckle!

            Interesting that it makes sense to you (the first part, not the drowning kids part). This is still a new idea that I am playing around with in my head. Not quite baked yet.

            Jan
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            • Posted by johnpe1 8 years, 5 months ago
              how insightful, and -- when you consider future history --
              it's prescient. . think of the inaccurate "certainty" of the news
              which, 'cuz it was on TV, must have veracity. . if, instead,
              we had to deal with the probabilities and the facts and
              the damnable math involved, we might get mired in
              the stuff of thinking or something -- YUCK! -- j

              p.s. this is the way that Jed O'Dea and I do books -- back and
              forth with multiplying ideas!

              the quote is::: "Delusions are often functional. A mother's opinions
              about her children's beauty, intelligence, goodness, et cetera ad nauseam,
              keep her from drowning them at birth."

              p.p.s. another Heinlein::: "Theology is never any help; it is
              searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there.
              Theologians can persuade themselves of anything." . that's why
              I collect flashlights.
              .
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  • Posted by ISank 8 years, 5 months ago
    It's been many moons since my undergrad course in modern Middle East history. There has always been a disconnect to what we've seen for the past 25 years and what I read from primary sources 100 years ago. This vid fits my previous understanding, and it's enjoyable. The dood would be beheaded in heartbeat nowadays.
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    • Posted by $ AJAshinoff 8 years, 5 months ago
      Iran wasn't always so ass backwards either. I had family friends who worked for Grumman in Iran and got out by the skin of their teeth. Talk about being pulled into the muck and mire. Agreed, that man and anyone who laughed in that crowd would be publicly executed today.
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      • Posted by jimjamesjames 8 years, 5 months ago
        I traveled through Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey in the spring of 1968 and all were delightful places to visit. I must say, I loved the "near stone age" of Afghanistan, but the people were friendly and fun. Sad........
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  • Posted by khalling 8 years, 5 months ago
    well, if you look at the timeframe-seems like knowledge and ideas could turn things around!
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    • Posted by IndianaGary 8 years, 5 months ago
      Precisely what the Atillas of the world will never allow. We are in an existential battle with one arm tied behind us. The bastard currently residing in the White House will scorch the earth rather than give up on his progressive "legacy".
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  • Posted by GaryL 8 years, 5 months ago
    Oil and the American dollar happened!
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    • Posted by $ AJAshinoff 8 years, 5 months ago
      I'm curious why you would say that. The Shah of Iran had a prosperous country with a modern population. It was the Ayatollah and his bassackward ideology that inserted itself into an Arab nation (not islamic) and reverted that country to the 7C. Are you suggesting that modernizing, raising the standard of living, of millions of his people by selling his resources caused all of this islamic terrorism?
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      • Posted by $ jdg 8 years, 5 months ago
        The people of Iran are not Arab but Aryan; indeed Iran means "land of the Aryans."

        Khomeini's casus belli was that the CIA assassinated Iran's then ruler, Mossadegh, in the '50s and replaced him with the Shah. Our cause for doing so was that Mossadegh had nationalized -- without compensation -- oil fields leased and developed by American companies. I have no problem with the CIA doing that, or doing the same to any other moocher government; I just wish it was still economically feasible for western countries to continue protecting their people's property this way.

        In any case, though, I don't ever accept the notion that terrorism is "caused" by any provocation. The cause is the terrorist; let us kill him, if we have to send the Army to do it.
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        • Posted by $ Susanne 8 years, 5 months ago
          The people were called Persian until 1935, when Dr Hjalmar Schacht, (the Nazi Minister of Economics) noted the Aryan origin of the Persians (Aryans are from the eastern Caucasus) and encouraged the Persian Reza Shah Pahlavi to ask foreign delegates to use the term Iran (the Persian word is Eran, not Iran), "land of Aryans" instead of Persia.

          (Hope this doesn't invoke Godwin's law...)

          I wondered way back in the 80's if when Khomeini seceded Pahlavi he (or they) would re-name it Persia... to reverse the influence of the puppet of the industrialized west.

          I do remember Iran the way it was, both the positives and negatives, before the fundies brought it forward from the 20th century to the 7th. Really sad regression... and it's now happening all over the middle east.

          I still wonder what would have happened if Khomeini hadn't survived his exile... if any of this insanity would have taken place.
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