I have no notes for this one, no particular preparation, and no way out.  Let’s suppose that I live to a ripe old age: in that case I hope my boys will treat me, handle me, and demand of me what I have been demanding and requesting of my parents on this blog.  The blog has been the place where the tone has shuttled back and forth between request and demand.  And what has been requested/demanded is a little courage.  A little courage to move out from under cover, and to show the world how beautiful the present moment can be.

It’s my turn to be courageous.  To put things down that are embarassing perhaps, but which, in the terms set out on this blog, deserve to figure here as straight from the heart, straight out of my lived present.  So here they are.

I converted to Michel Foucault in 1979.  I was selling newspapers at the time, and the Ayatollah Khomeini, who was in residence in a little town in France a few blocks from the summer residence of the writer Marguerite Duras , had just returned to his country, and was set to lead his country in a new direction.  It goes without saying that there was little support for the Iranian revolution in France, and of course even less in America.  Jimmy Carter probably lost the election because of the hostage crisis in Iran.  Only one person came out publically, in the French newspaper Le Monde, in favor of what he was seeing, in favor of what he had in front of his nose.  I don’t have the articles opened next to the computer this morning, but I remember well the central phrase, first in that aricle on the front page of Le Monde, then afterwards in the journalism he was able to do in Iran: “I studied a lot about the general will of the people when I was a student, and quite frankly never knew what to make of it.  I wondered even if such a thing even existed.  Well, today, the general will of the people is there in front of your nose: that’s what it looks like, and it’s the Iranians that are paying the price for this lesson in political philosophy.”

This morning anyone can read the twitters coming out of Iran.  Twitter doesn’t give much space for expression (only 140 signs, including spaces) but the effect is massive, because so many people are doing the same thing at the same time, and what they are doing is not applauding a band or a game of basketball or golf, they are getting ready to die if need be to defent the cause of freedom.  They are courageous.  Like those American soldiers who came to the beaches of France.  More courageous perhaps, because of the inner complexities of their country.  How many of us would defend our right to vote, and stay mobilized amidst doutes on the vote count?  How many of us would see that through?  How many of us would overcome all the calls inside us and outside, within and without, to just muddle through, and to avoid the pitfalls and dangers of to radical a stance?  How many  of our religious leaders would give us excellent reasons to keep cool, and not to jeapardize our own families’ well-being?  I sound accusatory, but I’m not.  I don’t feel like I would be very courageous, that’s all.

I don’t know what I think about Iran, except that today it appears to me to be the incarnation of the neo-conservative dream for the Middle East.  The neo-conservatives wanted democracy in the middle east: well, there it is, here it is, and all day today we’ll be seeing how democracy pans out in this great old country of Iran.  Once again, fat americans are saying that their thin careful president should be more vocal in his support of freedom.  How free are people with beer-guts?  I’m off focus.  the focus was in the sentence: “I don’t know what I think of Iran.”  Because it’s hard to think about this country, and about the way we sat back as Iran and Irak tried to exterminate one another.  Democracy did not come to Irak with the American war, but I believe it has knocked at the door in Iran, not because of a war, but because of a speech.  And I believe that between now and tomorrow morning, many young and not so young people will have died saying that their vote must count.  This is not a left and right wing confrontation.  This is a revolution which will either be snuffed out, or which will extend all over the country, throwing over a regime because of hardships and unequality.  These young people have thrown caution to the winds.  And yet, there is much to admire in the dual nature of the Iranian regime.  Much to admire in a constitution giving sovereignity to the people and to God, where this is not a sentence you stamp on coins, but an actual institution of political sovereignty.  Anyone who has studied political philosophy, any one who has become a lawyer, has a little acquantaince with these issues, and is right to point at the American constitution as a miraculous document of popular sovereignty with checks and balances to keep it in reign.  The checks and balances of our constitution are our way of saying with the Iranians, and with the Arabs all over the world: God is great, there is nothing greater than God, and God’s will will always prevail.

I’m sorry to be such a nincumpoop this morning.  I’m reading Michel Foucault, the lessons he gave in 1984 in Paris, knowing full well he was dying of aids after having laughed at people, several years before, who told him they were worried about a strange new sickness that was punishing homosexuals for their profligacy.  He laughed.  In 1984, he continued talking about the courage of the truth, and I’m sure he was thinking of physical courage, and the political courage of those people in Iran.  (He said in an interview that the first thing that hit him about students in Morocco was their courage: in Europe, he said, you read Plato and Aristotle and Montesquieu in well-lighted libraries, but in Morocco freedom was something you fought for in the streets).  Courage of the body, and courage of the soul.  So he took us back to the last days of Socrates, Socrates who was concerned to calm his followers, more concerned with that than with dying.  All of a sudden, Socrates got up from his bed, and said: “Crito, we owe a rooster Asklepios.  We must pay our debts”!  They he keeled over.  The poison had done its job.  Now Foucault and the rest of us must “interpret” these strange last words.  What happened to courage?  What link is there between courage and that rooster?  The rooster is a national emblem in France.  Comics point out that the rooster crows, thus sings, even though its feet are sunk in shit.  The courage lies in always taking care.  Another one of those popular expressions that circulate every day, like “have a great day.”  Everyone says “Take care”: well, Socrates pointed out that we have to take care of ourselves, that nothing is more important than that, and also that the laws of a country were written to take care of us also, and that the reason we believe in Gods is because they were the original beings who conceived of something like care.  So let’s take care of ourselves, of our Gods, and thank God for our laws and our democracy.  And let’s take care of the news cycle today, devoted to another round of the US Open, but also to dawnng democracy in Iran.

I’m sorry to be so strung out here.  It’s what is most accurate, and most telling, about me.