Khamenei's funeral is attended by millions while 'America's' 250th is barely remembered. The 'Americans' had a cage fight on the lawn followed by an empty state fair. Meanwhile seemingly everyone in Iran has turned out in procession and prayer. These things are not the same and the world is not the same. The old world is dying and the new world is not struggling to be born. It's already here.

Iran's funeral feels like a rebirth and 'America's' birthday felt like a funeral. This is a tale of two funerals, which I will tell with photographs, to spare me thousands of words. JK, there's thousands of words including prescient ones from Khamenei at the end.

Iran's funeral for Khamenei will probably be the largest in history, larger than his predecessor Khomenei's or the great General Soleimani's, which were both up there. Iranians are funerary luminaries. You can tell a lot by how people bury their dead—indeed this is how we begin to mark civilization—and Iranians really bury their dead. They're still burying Husayn ibn Ali, centuries hence. Remembering is rebirth in this way. It keeps the dead living, it keeps the expiring inspiring.

Like General Qassem Soleimani's funeral (who Trump also martyred), Ayatollah Khamanei's funeral is taking place across multiple sites, Tehran, nearby Qom, and cities in Iraq.

In Tehran his funeral truck—carrying his body, his grandchild, his daughter, daughter-in-law, and son-in-law—couldn't even make it through the initial route, which was so thronged with mourners. The people are waving the red flag of revenge, which says "Ya Litharat al Hussein" ("O avengers of Hussein"). This refers to Husayn ibn Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad who was martyred along with his family rather than submit to a tyrant.

In contrast, you can see the tyrant Trump standing in a train going nowhere in stolen North Dakota, with a bussed in crowd for his busted approval rating.

The streets of Tehran have, in fact, been full of people since Khamenei died. People have been protesting for 'the regime' continously since his assassination. For his funeral, the streets were absolutely packed.

Meanwhile, 'Americans' seem to have given up on protesting their forever wars, which is actually a bad sign for them. It means 'Americans' have given up on 'America'. Their choices are just genocide or diet-genocide, pro-war war criminals or anti-war war criminals, people in the Epstein files or other people in the Epstein files, rainbow corruption or White corruption. 'America's' ruling oligarchs have given up on even lying convincingly to their people and their people can't be convinced to show up, either in protest or support. They've just given up. It's all circuses and no bread, and the government can't even pay for the circuses, they're all corporate sponsored.

When Trump organized a 'Great American State Fair' to celebrate 250 years of 'America' people just didn't turn up. I've been to state fairs and they're packed, this 'national' state fair was a ghosttown for a dead nation. It was literally a lot of empty chairs representing the states that will soon, inshallah, splinter off.

The 'American' government obviously doesn't care about its people and its people obviously don't care about it. Trump has the lowest approval rating in history and his Iran war started with the lowest approval rating in history and the US Congress is slightly above testicular cancer but the American regime has decided it just doesn't care. You're getting neoliberalism or neo-Nazism and if you don't like it you can go elsewhere. This is a superpower in itself, this shamelessness, but it's a one-time use thing. If you give up on the consent of the governed you don't get it and then what are you? A brittle regime like you call everybody else.

'Americans' have always been a selfish people but there was a sort of shared selfishness, personified by the 4th of July. As a young man growing up in 'America', I spent one fourth of July when I must have been about 14 drinking many shots of Absolut Vodka (really my first time drinking), getting violently ill, and my 'friends' leaving me in the garage to go watch the fireworks. That's 'America' for you. 'America' is just a bunch of atomized people run out of fuel, slowly melting down into radioactive waste. Still capable of killing, but no real energy left.

Contrast this to the Iranian people, who are bereft but have not left their streets for an instant. This funeral is the culmination of months of people being out in the streets for Khamenei. It's only now that Khamenei has joined them. Rather than disappating their energy, these acts of collecting mourning renew them. It is renewable energy. I realize, as I get older, that funerals are not for the dead, they're for the living, they stitch people together around a wound rather than leaving a wound festering. And this funeral comes after Muharram, the commemoration of the martydom of Husayan ibn Ali. Iranians must be positively vibrating with spiritual energy.

Constrast this with 'Americans', who are just loitering around, waiting to leave. Trump is putting up a bunch of temporary styrofoam architecture, organizing (really robbing) a bunch of poorly planned, tacky events, and the only real spirit left is mean-spiritedness and grift. 'Americans' were always colonizing, genociding, bastards, but they were good at it, and good at selling it. But this really feels like a going out of business sale. What is even left of these people? They're pathetic.

For a contrast, here is IRGC Commander Hassan Hassanzadeh (he's basically Hussein twice) picking up garbage himself and Jewish gambling heiress and mega-corrupter Miriam Adelson being taken out of an evacuated event before everybody else. One people take out the trash and another are trash people.

This attitude isn't new. Look at Mount Rushmore, the Six Grandfathers mountain the invasive Americans defaced and where they still haven't cleared up their waste.

They just left their mess there to this day. That's rubble underneath.

Returning to the present day, both events had to deal with high heat, but they dealt with them differently. Iran dealt by planning and collectively caring for each other, and 'America' dealt by not planning, using the military and police to evacuate, and then the people not listening because they don't trust anybody. Telling, isn't it?

These people, these places are not the same. You can see it in these two events plain. 'America's' birthday is like a barely attended funeral, while Iran's funeral is hugely attended revival of faith. 'America's' regime visibly doesn't care about its people, and its people visibly don't care about it. Meanwhile Iran's revolutionary government is, if anything, behind its people in their desire for vengeance as the Islamic Revolution is reborn in the streets.

This is a tale of two funerals, and—as sad as I feel seeing, especially, the little coffin—don't mourn for Khamenei and his family. Or—since this is honestly impossible for me, what am I saying—mourn for them like Hussein and his family, who are still living and still inspiring resistance against tyranny. As the Quran says, "Do not think of those who have been killed in God's cause as dead. They are alive, and well provided for by their Lord." And rejoice for 'Death to America' which, I think, has already happened, the signal has just not reached their meagre and distant brains.

I will leave you with some words, at length, from Khamenei, because he was (until they killed him) my favorite living philosopher. In his collected sermons from 1974, called Islamic Beliefs: Reclaiming The Narrative, he said,

This is a fundamental doctrine of Islam and an integral part of the Islamic worldview, namely that a happy future lies store for the human race. Why? Because God created the Heavens and the Earth in accordance with truth, and the human being's very nature (fitrah) is to pursue the truth...

Now, some will say that, looking at history, wherever the truth is proclaimed, wherever its notes reach people's ears, it is ultimately fruitless and without result. The truth is suppressed... After all, even in their own times, the prophets were not able to achieve anything and, ultimately, it seems that falsehood always prevails over truth... Therefore, the truth-seekers and truth-proclaimers of this world should keep their swords sheathed, sit down, and do nothing, because taking action is pointless... This is the logic that many people follow. And it is a logic that is pleasing to the world's tyrants.

Then, speaking from the 1970s as if he was reading the headlines today, Khamenei said,

The pages of the world's newspapers are filled with the bluffs of our national leaders for this very reason. Someone who only has a few hours, or at most days, left before his government is removed from power will bluff to the very end. He will say that he is defeating his enemies, overcoming his opponents, that everything is under control and that his government will continue to rule regardless.

He was saying this about the dictator of Iran, who he defeated in life, but it applies to the Great Satan, 'America', who he defeats in death. What are the conditions for success in this life, for the defeat of tyrants? Khamenei said,

This general rule is that wherever the prophets found followers of sufficient faith and perseverance, they were successful.

People might say, speaking now about the great battle still raging, that the Al Aqsa Flood was a waste, that it wiped men of the caliber of Khamenei, Nasrallah, and Sinwar away, along with a river of innocent blood like his granddaughter Zahra, Hind Rajab, the innocent children of Minab and so many more, and what for? 'Israel' still stands, 'America' is still grandstanding, still celebrating while millions mourn. But this is the vital lesson that Khamenei was trying to teach, this is the point he was trying to preach, to build a community of faith and perserverance and now all can see it, in the streets, while the evil Empire we can also see, in ignomious retreat.

On October 7th, 1974 Khamenei 'predicted' the Al Aqsa Flood of October 7th, 2023 not because he was a prophet but because he followed the prophet and the prophet followed God who 'understands the principles on which the world and human history operate better than we do.' Speaking to mortals through parables,

God begins by saying 'He sends down water from the sky whereat the valleys are flooded to their capacity,' whether they are big or small, 'and the flood carries along a swelling scum'. The floodwaters in the valleys carry a froth on their surface. When you stand next to a flooded river, what you see first is not the water, but the scum and the froth that floats on top of it. The water is underneath. It is the froth that is visible first and foremost. The water is hidden.

Does this not describe the Al Aqsa Flood, and the media and mental tumult of watching it unfold, especially through media and 'international' institutions reveled to be such scum? It certainly seems like the scum of the Earth are the most visible, but waters run deep. Khamenei answers our questions about today from far away, saying,

So God says: 'As for the scum, it leaves as dross, and that which profits the people remains in the earth. That is how God draws comparisons.' The scum disappears and becomes nothing. There is no always froth on rivers. It is there for a moment, then gone... 'That is how God draws comparisons' for you: He wants to show you how truth endures. The mission of the prophets is truth. The uprisings of the prophets are truth. The falsehoods that stand against the prophets vanish. They fade away. They collapse. They are the scum. The dross. The foam on the water. When you examine them, you see that they are really nothing.

Then as he concluded, addressing our ongoing October 7th as much as the one he was speaking from,

Today's lecture is at an end. I implore you to pay attention in these coming days, as we are now entering the main and most important topic of the series.