Despite what some may think, I actually have difficulty choosing a topic for this forum from time to time. Shocking, I know.

This month, though, it didn’t take long for me to settle on a subject (that had nothing to do with any of the copious, high-profile, celebrity deaths). There was one story that stood head and shoulders above all others in terms of global impact and import to national security.

The event I’m discussing in this issue dominated headlines and ensnared the attention of both Americans and the rest of the world for a greater part of the past month. For weeks, it commanded an extraordinary amount of airwaves and bandwidth.

The worldwide attention garnered by this upheaval was well deserved, since it could affect the geopolitical landscape of the entire planet. The ripples it created will likely have ramifications on the future of billions of people.

As you’ve probably deduced by now, I’m talking about the earth-shattering announcement that Jon and Kate Gosselin of Jon & Kate Plus 8 are getting a divorce. I can only hope to God that President Obama handles this situation right. Really, this is such a pivotal moment in our history.

Actually, I’m talking about the demonstrations in Iran that started after the country’s presidential elections. You’ve got to admit, though, that there are some parallels between Iran and the Gosselins.

For one, Kate – like the mullahs and Ahmadinejad – rules with a heavy hand. She does not handle dissent very well. And like the young people of Iran, Jon just wants to be free from a repressive regime. Also, Kate has been known to go “nuclear” on occasion.

If only the average American watched the happenings in Iran with as much interest as the brain-numbing reality TV shows. Sadly, Bravo TV seems to have cornered the market on the slogan “Watch what happens.”

We’re the ones who proudly proclaim before every sporting event that this is the “Land of the Free,” yet tens of thousands of people in a country dubbed a part of the “Axis of Evil” have been schooling us on what it really means for everyday citizens to fight for liberty. Most eligible voters here don’t bother to go to the polls, even though no harm will come to them for doing so, yet the people over there are risking arrest or a sniper’s bullet in an attempt to ensure that their votes are counted and their voices heard.

And it’s mostly young people who are taking to the streets and leading the protests. Contrast that with the political activism of the same generation in America.

A friend of mine who’s a DJ on a pop station in New Orleans said she tried to talk about the Iranian protest when it first started, but she was scolded by the management for discussing politics. Instead, she had to talk about Lindsey Lohan’s jewelry getting stolen, because in this celebrity-obsessed culture, Lilo’s stolen jewelry trumps a stolen election eight days a week.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, you had 26-year-old Neda Agha-Soltan become a martyr and a powerful symbol for the opposition after she was gunned down in the street by a sniper. The whole thing was captured on video and went viral on the web.

Since then, we’ve learned that Neda wasn’t really the most politically active person. In fact, she wasn’t even participating in the protests at the time. Instead, she was stuck in traffic created by the demonstrations and had stepped out of the cramped car to get some air.

Still, I think it’s safe to say that she was way more politically engaged than a typical 26-year-old American woman. I never met her, but I would dare say that Neda monitored the political tumult in her country more closely than she did the tumultuous relationships of The Real Housewives of Tehran.

As I watched the events in Iran begin to unfold, I became extremely thankful that the United States never followed through on its threats to attack the country. Think about it: For the last several weeks, the Iranian people have been doing for themselves what the U.S. has been trying to do in Iraq since 2003, and no American soldier has shed a single drop of blood in the streets of Tehran.

I believe one of the reasons why we haven’t seen in Iraq what we’re watching in Iran is a lack of national identity. As a nation, Iraq has existed only since the end of World War I, when the British drew an arbitrary border around various and distinct ethnic groups who were told to share a country.

For nearly 400 years before that, rival tribes fought each other while the Ottoman Empire ruled the land. Much like the ethnic groups who shared the former state of Yugoslavia, they’re too distrusting of one another to unite for the common good.

Iranians, on the other hand, have a common heritage. They are a remarkably proud people with a rich culture and history, throughout which they’ve repeatedly managed to reassert their national identity, even in the wake of foreign invaders. Iranians will coalesce against any force that dares attack them because they are extremely nationalistic (much like the Chinese and Texans).

This is why I’m glad President Obama has offered moral support for the opposition and nothing more. If we start trying to throw our weight around like so many idiots in the GOP want us to do, then we’ll be giving the establishment the ammunition it needs to propagandize and convince the populace there that they need a hardliner a–hole like Ahmadinejad to keep them safe from America.

For us, starting a revolution in Iran is like starting a campfire. Yes, you want to fan that tiny spark so it will become a roaring flame, but if you help too much, you’ll blow it right out. Good thing the hard-core Republican windbags aren’t in power to screw this up.

It’s almost as though they think we invented the democratic process and no one could possibly get it right without our intervention. They also seem hell-bent on taking anything they can get their hands on to “prove” that Obama is weak.

For instance, I’ve heard diplomatically illiterate Republican apologists say idiotic things like, “Look at the signs they’re holding up over there. They’re in English, which means they want our help! Obama’s so horrible. He’s weak and he’s turning this country into a communist staaa … blah, blah, blah.” (Sorry, but that’s about the time everything coming out of their mouths becomes white noise.)

Well, if English messages on the streets of Tehran mean that the people holding them want us to intervene, then the establishment must want us to jump into the fray, too. I say that because I saw footage of police there holding up riot shields, and upon each shield was emblazoned the word “Police” … in English!