On the other hand (Iran)...

...I have to admit that it is extremely impressive that Twitter's #iranelection tag is still seeing no fewer than 30 tweets a second. It's a serious firehose of information, and appears to be the main way the entire action is being held together. Iran seems, so far, unable to plug all of the holes that are letting Twitter work there.

So...Iran...um...meh

I find myself unable to care on more than a very basic, entirely intellectual level about what's going on in Iran right now.

Some of it is the firm belief that, no matter what happens to the politics there, it won't actually change our relationship with them. They'll still hate America. We'll still be rivals for power and influence in the region. They are, in fact, our enemy in that region, and not the least bit abashed to say so, themselves. They'll still be trying to build a nuclear arsenal. They'll still be working actively for the destruction of Israel.

It's not, mind you, that I think they deserve to have their election stolen from them. They definitely do not. It's just that it's not going to be the magic wand, hearts-and-flowers fix that everyone thinks it will if the current protests actually lead to the kinds of change we'd like to see over there.

I'm also not as firmly convinced as everyone else seems to be that the election was, in fact, stolen. It's easy for us to assume that it was, because we believe the current regime to be Evil Incarnate and therefore capable of doing just about anything. And in truth, I don't put it past them, at all. I'm just not convinced it happened.

Which makes what's happening right now an attempt at a coup, rather than an attempt to correct an abuse of the democratic process.

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Of course, it could all really be that I am currently wrestling with a much more local, personal tragedy in my social cloud. It's at least possible that my emotions are too tied up dealing with a friend's senseless suicide to spare any for the larger issues of the day...