All politics is local

International legitimacy matters less (or more) than you think, depending on your professional, personal, and sociohistoricultural background-induced biases.

It matters less than you think, if you think as most intellectuals do, viewing the system-wide interactions of the pilotless, rudderless international system.

Those who use Occam's razor to argue that there is no God would find a similar line of argument that concludes that belief in an "invisible hand" is likewise irrational.

Most of us don't give a flying flip about the international legitimacy. Those who care about it tremendously tend to be in self-imposed intellectual and cultural - if not physical - exile from their countrymen, depending upon some intangible and poorly quantifiable form of recognition and validation from abroad to confirm their superiority (real or imagined). It may also fend off whatever residual nationalism/tribalism that resides in the subconscious, that which whispers in the spaces of the night words like 'fifth column', 'Judas', 'Benedict Arnold', 'traitor to the race', etc.


Why these short, pithy, and, if I choose to flatter myself, Wittgenstein-esque statements? Partly because I'm dizzy and about to pass out. But partly because I don't have a firm enough grasp of the relative weight of the international and the local, and their covariant interactions, to really flesh out a well-articulated thesis on whether Ahmadinejad's behavior is irrational, or short-sighted, or simply a product of his position within his country and the world.

Ahmadinejad doesn't need the international community. And Moussavi doesn't need them yet - he will if he gets in power, or is at risk for jail/execution. For these, and many other reasons, Rep. Pence (R-IN) needs to stop shockjockeying and ensure that in his quest for domestic power, he doesn't fuck up efforts by the reformists in Iran. Or maybe he doesn't need to care - again, we all have a part to play.

Tired - will review this later, and distill some truth from madness. All truth is born mad, but beaten into believability and convention along the way. Unfortunately for us, all truth dies mad as well.