| Grace Kelly asked that I remove my criticisms of her Iran/RNC post from the post itself, so in an honest attempt to be the magnanimous one, I will:
It's insulting to the progressive movement and our shared values to imply that there is some kind of rational comparison between what happened at last year's Republican National Convention and the violence and turmoil occurring now in Iran.
The protestors who caused trouble in St. Paul last year were there to cause trouble, not make some kind of larger political point. Those who were there to make a political point were co-opted by the troublemakers. Since the RNC, most of the filed charges have been dropped, and the physical injuries have healed.
Do we even know yet how many have died in Iran because they took to the streets to speak out against their government? How many have been beaten to death by the Basij militia while on their way to the hospital for treatment from other injuries? How many media outlets have had their doors locked by the Iranian police?
The only equivalency between the two events, as far as I'm concerned, is the failure of the traditional media to cover them properly. Last year, The Uptake ate the collective lunch of the Twin Cities' and national media on what was going on outside the XCel center, and now we have newspapers reprinting Twitter messages as news because there's no other way to get information out of Tehran.
But the equivalency stops there.
Are changes needed in our enforcement policies? You bet. Those changes appear to be happening -- mostly out of the public eye, but MPR has done some good reporting on the aftermath and learning experience for both local police and policymakers on the matter. It's getting better.
As Americans, I am of the opinion that we have become more than a little spoiled by the rights we see as ours, with little more than a slap on the wrist and a pat on the head to remind us of the struggles that led to those rights' codification into law.
It would do us well to remember that elsewhere around the world, people are still dying for the rights we hold so dear -- and would be beaten to death on the spot if caught doing some of the things that happened in St. Paul last year.
It would do us well to remember how lucky we are that ours is a nation of laws. It's not perfect, but no political order ever is, and the genius of American law and jurisprudence is its ability to change with the times.
It would do us well to remember the dead and still-struggling around the world without comparing our comfortable lives here to their agony.
Making such a spurious comparison cheapens their sacrifices and makes us as Americans sound like the whiners as which much of the world already sees us. |
