Other peoples' revolutions

For the last week I've watched friends on Facebook decry the brutality of the crackdown on protesters in Iran. "Contact the UN about what's going on in Iran!!! (and it's always with multiple exclamation marks)" Because that will accomplish...what exactly? And on Twitter, half my friends have tinted their avatars green to show support for the Iranian supporters of Mir Hossein Mosavi, whose green face is often seen waving above the heads of fashionably-dressed Iranian youth like a cartoon character about to throw up.

To be honest, the whole thing makes me feel rather nauseous too.

Now I have a great deal of respect for anybody who is willing to stand up and risk being shot for what he or she believes in, regardless of the cause. It takes some balls – or gall, depending on your gender – to brave live ammunition.

What's loathsome is the way Americans respond to other peoples' revolutions. We are (for some reason) shocked and disturbed that they're using live ammunition, not realizing that this is how revolutions work. People march, tear gas is released, some get shot, but hopefully (though unfortunately less often than not) things change for the better.

We tint our Twitter avatars green because the cool kids twittering in Iran are waving green banners, not knowing that green is the color of Islam – the same color that gets waved and worn at Hamas rallies. Nor has anybody bothered to read anything about Mir Hossein Mousavi, assuming he's Nelson Mandela or Robert F. Kennedy, rather than a man who was involved in the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut in 1982, was known for crushing dissent when he was the Iranian prime minister during the 1980s, and ran on a platform of returning to the teachings of Khomeini and catering to business interests in addition to moderating a few of Iran's repressive social rules. Ahmadinejad may crush dissent too, but at least he redistributed oil money to the poor -- the ones cleaning up after the "Gucci crowd" when they've finished protesting for the day.

And, of course, the support provided to the kids in Iran is remarkably selective. There is no twittering about the Palestinian kids in Bil'in who every week utilize the teachings of Ghandi and King and stand up to and get shot by live ammunition because their homes are being stolen, their education is cut off, and their youth is often spent in jail because they had the audacity to be born in a land someone else wants. There is no indignation over the fact that the gas flowing into our cars comes at the expense of some other Shi'ite kids - but in Saudi Arabia - who can't even practice their religion and nor dream of protesting because they would be immediately shot or worse.

But the thing about Americans and other peoples' revolutions that really makes me sick is that it's like we live vicariously through them rather than get off our asses and march in the streets ourselves. At this very moment a handful of rich white guys on the Senate Finance Committee are about to hand the insurance companies – the very entities that keep us from the getting the health care we need – a trillion dollars worth of our taxes without even giving us the choice to buy cheaper, better insurance from the government. And Americans aren't going to do a damn thing about it.

Nor is the "cool" American president young people voted for because all their friends on MySpace said they just had to vote for him. Indeed about the only campaign promise he is keeping is escalating the war next door to Iran in Afghanistan and its neighbor Pakistan. He sat by and let Congress vote down a bill to help people being kicked out of their homes. True, he is closing Guantanamo Bay, but only by indefinitely holding people elsewhere for crimes they might commit. And now with health insurance reform (and that's what it is, not health care reform), the only thing he's told Congress he's firm about is that he wants a bill on his desk by October.

In the meantime, 18,000 people a year are dying for lack of health care. Thousands more are going bankrupt despite having health insurance. Hundreds of thousands of people are losing their homes (not to mention another hundred thousand were homeless before the foreclosure crisis ever started). Millions are out of work. Millions -- who are disproportionately African-American – are in jail in our supposedly free, democratic society (more than China, Russia, and Iran combined). Millions are living in third-world conditions inside our very borders (and again are disproportionately African-American). Over a hundred thousand bridges are "structurally deficient or functionally obsolete." Our educational system is churning out students who cannot write, calculate, or think critically. And, of course, the planet is burning up, the weather is changing, and the one major city already drowned as a possible result has been largely forgotten.

If you're fine with all that, then by all means, keep updating your Facebook page with pics from that party last Saturday. Keep reporting what you had for breakfast on Twitter. Keep watching cat videos on YouTube and noting your occasional outrage on Reddit.

But if you want access to decent, affordable health care, might I suggest you get off your ass and into the streets because Washington is not going to change just because you elected that cool guy you secretly wish was your dad/lover who promised it. Washington is only going to change by the people taking seriously the job that the Founding Fathers gave us in the first place: government. "We the people..." – remember? We are the government, not Pfizer, Lockheed Martin, Citibank, Blue Cross Blue Shield, or Clear Channel. But they are the ones running this country, not you or me. And they aren't going to give up the power they've got until we rip it out of their cold, dead hands.

So quit prattling on about a revolution ten time zones away without doing something here. Quit delegating the job of changing the world to somebody else. The coolest revolution of all is the one you twitter about from the streets, not your living room.

Instability

My ass has been so sore the last several days that it hurts to sit much, even on my bed (aka The World's Softest Bed), hence the paucity of posting. I've had a couple of posts I've wanted to write for weeks now rattling around in my brain, but between some nasty crashes and the events described below, blogging has dropped way down the priority list.

On May 29th, I woke up feeling as if someone had driven a railroad spike through the base of my spine. I couldn't walk, sit, stand, or turn over in bed without excruciating pain. A week later at 6:30pm, it abruptly stopped, allowing me to sit again and walk a bit (aided by a cane...or two), though it still hurts quite a lot to stand or turn over in bed.

This has happened once before, also right before my period and also during a month when I'd gotten an extra dose of estrogen (that time I had gone off the progesterone-only pill but this time God only knows why I got the extra dose of hormones). However unlike last time, I had a good idea this time around what was causing the pain because my physical therapist had recently identified weakness in my right sacroiliac joint (where the sacrum at the base of the spine attaches to the pelvis) and given me exercises to strengthen the muscles surrounding the area (which I have been doing religiously, especially as I can do them laying in bed). That extra batch of estrogen made my ligaments even more lax than they already are, leaving my sacroiliac joint even more unstable.

In normal human beings, this is a very, very stable joint with super thick, strong ligaments to keep it in place. In me, it slips and slides around like a kid on wet plastic in the hot summer sun. It's not my only joint that does this. I've had two surgeries to correct unstable joints (right ankle and knee). My fingers, elbows, hips -- all pop in and out of place. And since junior high I haven't been able throw a ball over hand using either arm without the shoulder coming completely out of joint and then popping back in.

And yes, it feels just as icky as it sounds.

After talking with my physical therapist, she's recommending I start using a walker until it heals up (though my insurance company at the moment won't approve said walker). I also have a brace to help it stay in place, but the brace presses down on an already pinched lateral femoral cutaneous nerve in my right thigh.

Sigh. I'm a real piece of work alright.

But -- at least today! -- I have a bit more energy. Fingers crossed, I'll get to those posts that have been floating around in my head and bring some stability to my blogging.