Roger Cohen, whose column from Tehran is very moving. My father sent it to me, noting Cohen’s comment that he had previously “argued that, although repressive, the Islamic Republic offers significant margins of freedom by regional standards. I erred in underestimating the brutality and cynicism of a regime that understands the uses of ruthlessness.”
It is well to remember when contemplating the stability, prosperity, and cultural opening of authoritarian states like China that the arbitrary and ultimate power of the government means just that: we err if we relativize their freedom, as their freedom is contingent, illusory, unreliable. If threatened, such governments will do whatever they must to control their own people.
Cohen continues:
“Majir Mirpour grabbed me. A purple bruise disfigured his arm. He raised his shirt to show a red wound across his back. “They beat me like a pig,” he said, breathless. “They beat me as I tried to help a woman in tears. I don’t care about the physical pain. It’s the pain in my heart that hurts.”
He looked at me and the rage in his eyes made me want to toss away my notebook.
The column is worth reading, particularly for its scale and concerns: in the midst of it are individual, powerless people; in the face of it, journalism and poetry are at once essential and irrelevant. Power decimates their value, but crushed by power they are all we have left.
