So I’m just sitting here reading my Twitter feed and we’re on the third day or so of this whole ‘Revolutions are cool when the blood runs in someone else’s street’ deal. Not a month since everyone applauded President Obama in Cairo for telling the world we think Democracy is not a universal solution and we’re changing our mind about that.
Iran better get Democracy, darn it, and they better do it today!
I guess since some of the folks on the barricades in Iran were actually using Twitter to get the story out there that made other Twitterers feel like they were in on the action, too.
There were some seemingly good ideas at first–changing your settings to fool the Iranian Bad Guys, not taking Twitter down for scheduled maintenance–that seemed in the spirit of things.
But now everyone and her brother are changing their Twitter avatars to green to show support for democracy in Iran. Because somewhere in the midst of all the shooting and killing and deposing heads of warring factions one of these crazed powermad Iranians is sure to say ‘Wow! Look at all the little green boxes on Twitter! I must change my ways and step down and put a stop to all this killing I’m doing!’
It makes no sense to me. I understand that it’s hard to watch people struggle from afar and feel like we can’t change anything.
I also understand that most of the people I see with green avatars are the same people I know to most loudly protest our actual attempts to REALLY get inolved in bringing Democracy to the Middle East.
It confuses me because it seems to elevate the empty gesture over making the hard choice to actually get involved for real.
Sadly the truth of the thing is that if you want to really get involved in showing support for Democracy in Iran–or Iraq–the only colour that changes things is blood red.
Just Another Pretty Farce 
As someone who doesn’t have a green avatar on Twitter, I’d still have to disagree that those kinds of “empty gestures” are meaningless. You’re right that no powermad Iranian is going to see them and suddenly stop what they’re doing, but it lends support to the opposition (however small), and I don’t think such a thing can be discounted outright. That’s why US politicians keep cheery “look how great we’re doing” atmosphere’s at their campaign hq. People work harder, faster and better if they feel like their united with others in some grand action.