Iran: Your Crazy-Racist Uncle

As a general rule, I tend to shy away from broaching the topic of "real world" politics; lately,  I am more content wasting my opinions amongst friends on the quality of film or the increasingly bland intricacies of wizard/human relations in modern fantasy novels - I'm looking at you Wheel of Time.

• Digression: 13 novels, each approaching 1000 pages = door-stop weight. Yeah, there is some fluff. Here's a hint: skip every chapter that has the P.O.V. of a girl. The author is a high-fantasy male author, so naturally about half the time the female characters are either concerned with how their boobs look in their clothes, or whether or not they'll get laid by one of the 3 main male characters. Oh yeah, and they can do magic. 

So I generally prefer wizard-boob fiction to bringing up the divisive force that is American politics. Since the election, there has been nothing galvanizing enough to make me willingly confront somebody on some kooky belief they hold on. For every rational debate that think you might be getting into, you never know if the other person will spring on you like a bear-trap some crazy rant about Obama being an Al-Qaeda operative or if they're some fringe crazy who goes into town hall meetings (without health-care) to yell-talk incoherent petulance at local/national officials -  who are trying to give them what they lack as a right - because some man on the radio or Fox news told them to.

Not to say that you should shy away from decrying ignorance when see or hear it, but most of the times it's better to just leave that can o' worms buried deep because, like when it comes organized religion, people will believe what they want. I'm pretty sure that's in the Constitution.

However, there seems to be one thing that my friends and I all seem to agree on: Iran is bat-shit insane. It's probably simple math: when A and B don't see eye to eye, well shit, at least we are not C. The cat was probably out of the bag when their failed "Most Interesting Man in the World" contestant/leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, repeatedly stated that the Holocaust was a hoax and that, unlike the U.S., homosexuality did not exist in Iran.

We all have someone like this in our family tree. When I was 12, I had to listen to a great-uncle say how they had a hootinanny of a party because his granddaughter had finally beaten a "Negro girl" in track and field. My mom quickly took me to get ice-cream that was, unconsciously or not, chocolate. 

Whether Ahmadenejad is a talking puppet or not, him and his outspoken "views" are merely a tool to further insight distabalization in the Middle East through division. Like my racist uncle, there is no we, but us and them. So it was particularly peachy today to see Ahmadenejad's reaction when he was first told by an American Time reporter that apparently, everyone knows what's going on his basement.

Taste that, Ahmadenejad? Yeah, that ice-cream is "oh-shit" flavored.