depth first search

I really cannot comment on the Iranian election itself, but I think I can comment somewhat on the popular pundit reaction to the election. Fortunately, Matthew Yglesias captures most of my thinking in < 140 characters:

People who now think Obama is insufficiently concerned with the Iranian people used to think we should drop bombs on them.

I’m not sure that one party in the dispute is particularly better from the point of view of American interests. From what I’ve read the opposition party is somewhat more moderate (whatever that even means in the context of a theocratic dictatorship). The fact that there are protests at all, and relatively non-violent protests (compared to the size of the demonstrations) as far as I can tell, seems like a good thing for Iranian liberals (whatever liberal means in Iran).

My point in making these observations is that all wonkish terms that we would normally use to describe the ebbs and flows of western style democracies don’t seem to fit this scenario, and reading the news analysis on this issue is more a study in failures of translation and the corresponding deconstruction of political language than an informative view into what is really going on.

Of course, given my lingering discomfort with religion, I’m sort of the last person who could hope to understand any side of the Iranian mindset.

ASIDE: Is it ironic that Iranians are relying on methods of communication that are a product of American entrepreneurial and technological ingenuity? Nevermind. This question sounds too much like “America is the best country on earth” and not enough like what I was trying to ask, which is whether we can conclude from Iranians’ use of things like Twitter whether they have a pro-western stance or not.