Al-Sadr is definitely in the theocracy camp: He isn't a dashing figure of grizzled heroism and homoerotic cleanliness like the best of the militaristic fashion. Of course every political party must have a militia, but that doesn't make it an army (no matter how fond it may be of putting "brigade" at the end of its name). I see Sadr as sort of the anti-Chalabi, the antithesis to his thesis (to yield the synthesis of... well, it's going to take a dictator to sort out Iraq at this rate, and dictators are never who you expect -- schoolteachers, artists, farmers, never the big scary generals.).
As for the timeline, well, you'd need to know the complete history of a third-world hellhole to do it properly, but to the extent you can draw a line in American history I'd look to reconstruction, the religious revivals that followed it, the Spanish American and First World War, and prohibition and Teapot Dome. (Actually Teapot Dome is a beautiful example of its type: A corruption scandal growing like a parasite within the militaristic imperialism of the age, emerging like a tapeworm from the military-industrial complex's ass). Of course then the Great Depression intervened before the corrupt and decadent 20's could be properly done away with, but that's the nature of life in a non-crappy country: Actual real-life concerns of the citizenry take the driver's seat from time to time. The US is a bad example in that respect. Italy might be better -- it had actual religious political parties at nearly all times, and so would be easier to track.
He's a weird sort of theocrat, since he really doesn't have the theocracy chops. (A recent speaker here familiar with Sadr's history said that during his seminary days he brushed off his studies to play video games, and was known among his fellow students as Abu Atari) He's really more of a cult figure than anything -- for that matter, the son of a cult leader, kind of the Islamic Kim Jong Il.
Abu Atari--I like that. Except for the stereotypical violent massacre-type preferences, of course. I think nonnihil gives me most of my international news, actually. The only other news I get is the Daily Show, and I miss it half the time.
> Al-Sadr is definitely in the theocracy camp: He isn't a dashing figure of grizzled heroism and homoerotic cleanliness like the best of the militaristic fashion.
There's something distressingly wrong about that mental picture....
As for the timeline, well, you'd need to know the complete history of a third-world hellhole to do it properly, but to the extent you can draw a line in American history I'd look to reconstruction, the religious revivals that followed it, the Spanish American and First World War, and prohibition and Teapot Dome. (Actually Teapot Dome is a beautiful example of its type: A corruption scandal growing like a parasite within the militaristic imperialism of the age, emerging like a tapeworm from the military-industrial complex's ass). Of course then the Great Depression intervened before the corrupt and decadent 20's could be properly done away with, but that's the nature of life in a non-crappy country: Actual real-life concerns of the citizenry take the driver's seat from time to time. The US is a bad example in that respect. Italy might be better -- it had actual religious political parties at nearly all times, and so would be easier to track.
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I think nonnihil gives me most of my international news, actually. The only other news I get is the Daily Show, and I miss it half the time.
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There's something distressingly wrong about that mental picture....
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