Christina Maki

I’m just going to warn you now that what I’m about to say might come as a surprise, especially coming from a hippie pinko liberal like myself.

BUT, here goes:

I’m really damn tired of hearing about Iran.

First of all, the fact that people are actually surprised that the elections didn’t work out just makes me laugh.

It’s IRAN, you guys. It’s been a thinly-veiled theocratic dictatorship for decades. You can’t expect their “democratic” election to run smooth like buttah. Democracy isn’t something you can get without a fight. We went through it ourselves, remember? That whole thing with Britain? Revolutionary War?

Yes, it’s incredibly sad that people are getting hurt and killed over this, but democracy doesn’t come without sacrifice. Did Ahmadinejad rig the elections? Yeah, it certainly looks that way. Does that suck a big one? Absolutely.

But that’s Iran. Why are we expecting them to change now? To think that they can–or would–change overnight seems hopelessly naïve.

And if the people of Iran want a revolution, and they want a change to stick, they have to do this themselves, from within. If we want to help, what we really need to do is sit on our hands and not go all Team America on them.

Secondly, please, for the love of sweet Buddha, stop with the green Twitter icons!

I love the fact that Twitter has been a catalyst for spreading news and awareness about the situation in Iran. I think that’s wonderful. I’ve gotten a lot of my updates through Twitter, and through reading people’s Twitter stream on Facebook.

But honestly, nobody in Iran facing gunfire and axes for expressing their beliefs really gives a shit what color your icon is.

And it makes my ENTIRE TWITTER STREAM look like it’s all coming from the same person. I’ve literally been avoiding Twitter for days because I can’t tell you guys apart anymore. You want to show support? Ok, cool. I respect that, even though I don’t really see how it realistically helps things to change your icon. But if you must do so, can’t you just put a green dot or something in one corner? Do you really need to change your whole icon into a murky green blob? I’d really like to smack whoever thought of that one.

…Okay, I feel marginally better now.

Carry on.