{"id":2555,"date":"2009-06-15T15:09:05","date_gmt":"2009-06-15T22:09:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/?p=2555"},"modified":"2009-06-15T15:09:05","modified_gmt":"2009-06-15T22:09:05","slug":"how-can-anyone-be-surprised","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/2009\/06\/15\/how-can-anyone-be-surprised\/","title":{"rendered":"How Can Anyone Be Surprised"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"float: right; margin: 10px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-content\/2009\/06\/iran-1979.jpg\" alt=\"Iranian Hostage Crisis, 1979\" \/><\/div>\n<p>The thing that is most surprising to me about the recent election in Iran where the incumbent hardliner won re-election is that anyone would be surprised about the outcome. I mean, come on, this regime in Iran is not exactly known for concepts like democracy or even making decisions based upon data (see Islamic Republic &#8211; if it ain&#8217;t in the Koran it ain&#8217;t happening.)<br \/>\n<br \/>\nSo there&#8217;s all this news coverage spewing all over on this subject and I find myself asking &#8220;why is anyone surprised and why is this news?&#8221; When the Ayotollah dies and isn&#8217;t replaced, then we can see if any real change is possible in Iran. While religious nutjobs run the country, things aren&#8217;t going to change without armed revolt.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nI have no enmity toward the Iranian people (in fact, some of the most interesting, intelligent, kind, and capable people I know originally hail from Iran &#8211; often they&#8217;re more oblique indicating they&#8217;re from Persia.) Indeed, I hope for their sake, they are able to reach some reasonable accord between their own collective free will and religion. It&#8217;s just that the situation that has recently played out had zero promise of that happening.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nIt&#8217;s up to the people of Iran to figure this out and if we&#8217;re smart, we&#8217;ll stay out of it whilst that happens. The rule of unintended consequences you know&#8230;Meanwhile, present-day Iran provides good example of why to keep church and state separate.<br \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The thing that is most surprising to me about the recent election in Iran where the incumbent hardliner won re-election is that anyone would be surprised about the outcome. I mean, come on, this regime in Iran is not exactly known for concepts like democracy or even making decisions based upon data (see Islamic Republic [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,96],"tags":[257,890,891],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2555"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2555"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2558,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2555\/revisions\/2558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}