Reaping the world wind.

It's a play, of course, on the political cliche, "reaping the whirlwind", trotted out every time an administration overplays its hand, and stirs up passions that might take forever to put down. The timeline is never short though, which makes sense; you ever tried getting your arms around a whirlwind?

A world wind, by contrast, we've seen those before.

Since I'm partial to the year, let's say 1968, for example. And to localize for personal reasons, let's say Chicago. Political protests. Generational conflict. Violence.

I'm not one to make lofty comparisons, but I will deal in comparable stories. Bob Greene, then a young NU journalism student, tells how he kick-started his career in those days of rage and change: He showed up in the streets.

He reported on the energies of his fellow students and idealists, in protesting the conservative Democrats in power locally, and the tricky Republicans whose best days were still to come. The Sun Times editors were covering politics, as well. But Greene says they missed the coming storm that played out on Michigan Avenue and in Grant Park, by underestimating the crowds that would converge. They apparently were caught off guard, as were Daley's forces, by the spectacle.

Ditto the protests today in Tehran, though you don't have to be a strong Middle East reader to understand the demographics there too and the incremental change that has been happening under the radar for years. People yearning to breathe free. Exposed to other options, in these days of technology and travel.

The people are speaking.

Of course, as in Chicago, there are certainly other voices too. And change takes time. Much as we might think that "outsider" help can speed things along, usually change comes from within and it's not the nudging but the critical mass that usually tips the scale and makes change happen.

Are we there yet? Depends on how you define "we", really...

Today in the NYT, David Brooks speaks of that infamous whirlwind portending change. And he's right. It will come, in it's own due time. Despite the urgings of those who would bade a world wind to move faster, to bring peoples up to a minimum standard, say.

My only wish was instead of writing about Iran today, Brooks might have written this about the domestic push to reshape healthcare distribution:

At moments like these, policy makers and advisors in the United States government almost always retreat to passivity and caution. Part of this is pure prudence. When you don’t know what’s happening, it’s sensible to do as little as possible because anything you do might cause more harm than good.

First, do no harm. It's good advice, really: leave the body alone to let it formulate its' own defenses for fighting back.