When it fails within, enforce the revolution without
Saturday, May 12, 2007 at 2:28PM ARTICLE: "A Word to the Wise In Iran: Don't Ever Wear a Tie to Work: Men, Too, Now Must Worry About the Fashion Police," by Andrew Higgins, Wall Street Journal, 12-13 May 2007, p. A1.
Pathetic, really pathetic.
Nothing says Late-Brezhnevian hypocrisy better than the ongoing fashion crackdown in Tehran.
Economy going down toilet, youth revolting, and mullahs increasingly ignored by a public desperate to open up to the outside world, so what do you do?
Crack down on ties and too much western-style facial hair grooming in men's barbershops.
This is a real sign of the mullahs' fears. They always treated women like crap. Now, they're so scared of Westernization, they're trying to scare men into conformity as well.
I mean, man!
What's the point of living in a patrimonial society if you're going to start doing that?
Reader Comments (8)
Enquiring minds, etc.
because word usage departs from its etymology. you see it's closer when you consider matrimony originally refers to the state of being a mother or becoming a mother
when globalization comes in, women start to go to work, they start to get educated, they bear fewer children...
Bill, is the problem with "Protecting", "Training", etc as such, or with the ideas and assumptions behind those actions?
For example, no one would argue with the notion that parents and society have a responsibility to protect and train children. No one argues with this because the responsibility comes with the assumption that children will grow up and leave, by which time they'll have been trained to protect themselves. When parents or society insist on making this protection permanent (without a good reason like mental illness), people rightly get upset.
To apply this to core-gap relations, if the protection we offer to gap countries is a temporary measure while we train them to protect themselves, then there's no trouble. Likewise if the punishment is selective for specific, appropriately serious offenses (sheltering Al Qaeda comes readily to mind) or the servitude is a temporary means to support them until they can become their own masters, then there's no big issue. But if the protection or servitude is permanent, or the training isn't aimed at making them self-sufficient, or the punishment is capricious, then yeah: there's a big problem needing solved.
Your equation rings very hollow, and very out of date. Start climbing Maslow's hierarchy and your appreciation of change will follow.
I do not understand. I made no reference to women in advanced societes -- -- only to how men treat women in "traditional societies." To be more correct, I probably should have said "... in certain traditional societies." But I believe that this comparison re: the Core's treatment of the Gap and men's treatment of women in certain traditional societies (in both cases: as property) is a good one -- and one which helps illustrate a key problem in today's strategic thinking regarding the Gap. Please see my comment to Michael below.
Michael:
I suggest that the Gap, yesterday and today, are not children, no more than adult slaves and adult women are children. Therefore, I say that the Core has no such "adult" authority over the Gap. The Gap is not our property. Accordingly, the Core must learn to treat the Gap as an equal -- in much the same way that we have learned to treat women and slaves as equals. This is the basis for true progress. Your arguments refering to the Gap as "children" ring very similar to old, outdated arguments made back-in-the-day by those who wished to continue to dominate and exploit slaves and women. Thus your arguments, I believe, help make my point.