Iran and Iran But I Never Could Catch Them

 My younger sister and my Dad never got along. My Mother used to say that from the day she brought my sister home from the hospital, she wanted nothing to do with my Dad. If Mom left her alone in the same room with Dad, she would scream and cry until my Mom was back in her sight. I am sure this demoralized my Dad, and as a parent myself now I can see how it must have angered him at times. (“What the heck is wrong with this kid?”) The situation was probably not helped by the fact that I was a sweet-natured little thing and loved my Daddy (and the rest of the world too). As my sister grew older, things did not improve between the two of them. We have a picture in the family album of a trip we took to the amusement park when my sister was around 6 or 7 years old; my father is stalking toward the camera with an angry look on his face, holding the hand of my balking, crying sister. From what I remember, she had taken off somewhere after she had been told to stay with us. Needless to say, this was not an unusual scenario. As the years went on, the war between my sister and my Dad escalated to the point where she ran away from home. More than once. She wasn't running away from abuse, or neglect, or any of the reasons that you hear kids run away for. She left because of my Father's ultimatum to her: “This is MY house....love it or leave it!” You see, my Dad was just like lots of dads. As long as you lived under his roof, you would follow his rules and like it. Some would call this a totalitarian state...and maybe my Dad was a little rigid and unbending (most of the time). My sister however, has never been the kind of person who just bows her head and says “yes sir”. And that is where I think the answer to this riddle lies. When two people are very much alike, it can become a great friendship or it can become a third world war. The shared stubbornness and bullheadedness between my sister and my Dad made it impossible for either one of them to bend. When all you can see is that you are right, it makes it impossible to see any other point of view.

I can see this same story working itself out in our modern, globalized society. As the boundaries between countries become more and more fuzzy it becomes even more important for the people of each country to proclaim who they are and what they stand for. The idea of becoming a big, homogenized world is a frightening one to many. Take the United States for instance. The citizens of the U. S. are extremely proud of their historical past (and very good at ignoring the sometimes horrible things we did to get where we are) and many cannot stand any criticism, especially from those who were not born here. Everyone has seen the bumper stickers and t-shirts that say “America...love it or leave it!” This inability to accept any point of view that doesn't jive with our own (decidedly narrow) idea of what is great about America can sometimes lead to violence and racism...and finally even war. The most recent country that the powers-that-be have decided is our deadly enemy is Iran. According to many views of the right-leaning persuasion, Iran is a rigid theocracy that only wants to destroy America and everything it holds sacred. Some use the example of Salman Rushdie to make their point. When Mr. Rushdie wrote the “Satanic Verses” there was an uproar in the Iranian government and a fatwa was issued on his head by the Ayatollah (the leader of Iran). The Iranian government was angry that Rushdie had written a book that looked at the religion of Islam in a satirical and irreverent light. To them this was blasphemy, a crime punishable by death, and they were determined to carry out this sentence. Mr. Rushdie went into hiding for ten years, until enough time had passed that he could come out of the shadows. This must have been a horrible experience for Rushdie, hiding in anonymous apartment buildings and basements of houses. He continued to write while he was in hiding, and much of his work at the time was colored by the fact that he knew he was probably a permanent exile from his own country. And so, Iran was the bad guy and the U. S. was the good guy for giving him a place to hide. Maybe. While America does not (openly) condone executing those who don't agree with us, we definitely do not treat dissenters in a kindly manner. And since 9/11 anyone who practices the faith of Islam here does it at their own peril. The United States government has imprisoned thousands of individuals since 9/11, many held without charges or the ability to see a lawyer. And recently, reports have surfaced regarding the use of torture on these prisoners. We are frightened of a country that can be just as rigid and unbending as we have been known to be; and just as unwilling to accept citizens that communicate their feelings about what they see as an unfair system. Those in the U. S. who exercise their right to free speech and to protest the war in Iraq, are many times recorded (by people who attend the protests pretending to be one of the crowd) so that the government can get their names and addresses as unpatriotic “dangers to homeland security”. According to Rob Burton, author of “Artists of the Floating World: Contemporary Writers Between Cultures”: “ Free speech...comes with certain responsibilities. It does not allow for individuals to spew forth anything, anywhere, and depend on the protection of the Constitution.” This is where the fine line is drawn between what is considered acceptable speech and activities and what is considered unpatriotic ones. Who decides this? The people or the government? And exactly when is it that the actions of the government intrude on my rights as a citizen? Does the Patriot Act give the government the right to use my attendance at a political rally or protest as reason to put me on a list of “unfriendlies”? It seems that our inability to see eye-to-eye with Iran may have much to do with the fact that we are not that different than they are in many ways. The negative things we see in Iran are the things in ourselves that we don't want to look at. According to “America...love it or leave it” you must join in the nationalistic fervor and not look in the mirror too closely.

I know, we have all heard many times that the people in Iraq and Iran have mothers, sisters, brothers, children, homes, dreams, blah blah blah.....

No really....they really do have mothers, sisters, brothers, children, homes, dreams like us! They don't want war any more than we do! They want to live in peace like we do! They don't want to destroy us any more than we want to destroy them! REALLY!

So just exactly what is our responsibility as citizens in this new globalized, floating world? What do we do when we mature enough to realize that in order to get along with those “others” that we see as alien to ourselves, we must be willing to look at the part of ourselves that are just like them? For many, this is a lesson that they never learn. They continue to see the world as “right vs. wrong” and “the good guys vs. the bad guys”. Even the president of the United States had fallen into this false dichotomy by naming certain countries in the middle east as the “axis of evil” and insisting that we all jump on the bandwagon of hate and fear of the “other”. Our individual responsibilities as human beings should not be to overlook or ignore it when this scenario is offered to us. We must all refuse these concepts of what some want us to believe about “others” and shed this hegemonic view of the world. We must all use whatever skills (such as writing) or gifts (such as music) that we possess to get out the message that every human being has the right to disagree with what we might think is the truth. This includes the citizens of our own country. And every human being has the responsibility to try to conduct open dialogue with those we don't agree with, to try to find common ground. There are many ways to “love” America without “leaving” it. By insisting that those who don't agree should leave, we put up a boundary wall with a one-way gate. Pretty soon, there will be no one left on this side of the gate and the U. S. will be a very lonely place.

There are some who say that the new presidential candidate Barak Obama is “naive” and “unrealistic” to propose that we should start negotiating face-to-face with those countries that we have always considered to be our enemies. But to bring someone around to your point of view, you must look them in the eye and see the similarities between you, not the differences. You must be willing to look at your own beliefs through someone else's eyes, and find the common ground between you. There are always common ground, common beliefs, common ways of thinking and feeling about the world. And since this is becoming a floating, globalized world we cannot continue to see ourselves as “us” and the rest of the world as “them”. There is really no way to “love it or leave it” since “it” is everywhere now. Most everything we eat, consume, watch or wear is manufactured and produced by “others”. It is upon those “others” that we depend for our very survival today.

That picture of my Dad and sister on the day of the trip to the amusement park was iconic in the way it summed up their relationship in one moment of time. They later became two human beings who were unable (or unwilling) to understand that the reason they did not get along was because of how alike they really were. Neither were willing to see the other's point of view. If my Dad and sister had looked a little closer at each other, they might have seen the reflection of themselves in each other's eyes and realized that they were just fighting with themselves. And maybe then they would have stopped and found a way to get along.

That would have made a much different picture, wouldn't it?