Faustian Weblog

Fortunately for the West, Ahmadinejad has destroyed the Islamic Republic of Iran – something the Neocons could only dream of doing. His stealing the election from the people could not have been more fortuitous short of having the Reza Pahlavi family return to power. We can now rest assured that the Shiite revival is ideologically dead in its tracks. Any shred of legitimacy and Islamic purity on the part of the clerics has been flushed down the proverbial Koranic toilet. Hezbollah and Hamas are as defunct as the Cuban sponsored revolutionaries in Africa after the fall of the Soviet Union. Even Israel could bomb their nuclear power plant and get approval from the rest of the Arab world. Persia will soon become a Middle Eastern version of Albania, exporting oil (to us) to keep its pathetic elite hanging on to power at the end of an AK47.

From this point onward, no one will care what they have to say. Following the Faustian rule that a sin is only expunged by committing a greater sin, the United States is finally forgiven for all its misdeeds and meddlings of the past.

Nice work Mahmoud…

News organizations just don’t get it. What has happened in Iran is tantamount to a putsch. Either way the Islamic government founded by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini is dead. If Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is successful in crushing the election results, the ensuing regime will be stripped bare of any remaining legitimacy and fall further into isolation. The United States and Israel will have no alternative but to engage it militarily as soon as it resumes its nuclear ambitions, which it will in short order. Currently, this is the most likely scenario. On the other hand, if the dissenting opposition manages to wrestle power away from the Revolutionary Guard, the constitution will be changed to eliminate clerical power forever.

Staying out of the fight, as our Emperor has opted to do, is the wrong decision.

Magic is a relationship between a magician and an audience sustained by an effect that defies a common understanding of reality.

Every magical act has a collateral cost that is discounted by the magician who performs it and the audience who consumes it. Those people who have to bear this cost are termed the victims of magic.

When a previously magical effect has been widely accepted as commonplace, it loses its magical quality and becomes part of a common understanding of reality.

A Faustian civilization is a culture that is obsessed with magic at the expense of a stable understanding of reality.

Rhetorical narratives are no substitute for magic.