What About Those Celebrating Iranians? We’ve Seen This Movie Before.

MAGA-heads scoff at liberals: Isn’t it great to see those overjoyed Iranians? Um, yes, but history, alas, warns us sternly against premature celebrations.

The MAGA faithful, well-schooled over the years in spotting what they believe to be instances of liberal “hypocrisy,” have taken to the interwebs since Saturday to say things like: Just look at all those overjoyed Iranians, you stupid libtards. Does this not make you happy? Is this not what the United States of America is supposed to be for? Is your hatred of Donald Trump so all-consuming that you’d rather see this operation fail, and the democratic aspirations of those poor Iranians, their breasts pounding with hope for the first time in decades, crushed?

These are the kinds of questions that seem, to MAGA loyalists, to be conversation-enders—absolutely open-and-shut. But they are not open and shut at all. In fact, they’re quite jejune. If you know or bother to recall a little history—of the world, of the region, indeed of U.S.-Iran relations—you know enough to know that those celebrations, while absolutely, 100 percent understandable coming from members of the Iranian diaspora who have relatives who are either living grim lives or in prison or perhaps dead, are alas premature.

I’ll get to that history, but first, in the interest of transparency, let me answer the three questions I posed above. First, yes, the sight of Iranians celebrating is a nice thing to see, although only to a point, as I’ll explain. Second, yes, the spread of liberal democracy is what the United States of America is supposed to stand for; it simply isn’t clear to me (and many millions of others) that things are quite that simple here. We’ve observed Trump for over a decade after all, and he has shown no such commitment to either democracy or liberation—he would just prefer for more people to be living under his book, as opposed to someone else’s. And it might surprise you to learn the answer to the third bullet point: No, actually. I consider Trump a walking malignancy in virtually every imaginable way, a cruel charlatan and sociopath who has done untold damage to the nation and world over........

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