Ahmadi's Green Herpes

Graeme Wood's feelings about the green revolution:

It would be awfully difficult to grind down the opposition so thoroughly that even the graffiti ceased. (After all, there is anti-government even in North Korea.) My sense is that the government regards the opposition now as something like herpes, capable of being managed but never cured. After all, the Mousavi opposition has -- unlike the Kurdish, Sunni, and Mujahedin-e Khalq oppositions -- never entered a violent phase, and successful political non-violence normally requires unsuccessful political violence as a prerequisite. The 2009 election will be always remembered as stolen, particularly by the young, but fury about the theft doesn't appear to be enduring enough to instigate change on its own. This generation's activists knew hope, briefly, but will have to get a little better acquainted with despair before they know it again.