What goes around, comes around

Well, now I know how my mother felt when I was in Tehran during the '79 revolution. I am currently watching events in Bangkok, as the Red Shirts exchange gunfire with the army. My son, daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren live in Bangkok. In an interesting twist, they're encountering road blocks, just like we did in Iran when Jason was ten years old. You'd turn one corner, and there would be tanks and soldiers. My job was to put a photo of the Shah in our dashboard window to indicate where our political sympathies "really" were. Most of the time, they'd see the photo and send us through without questioning us. Then around the next corner, we'd see a mob without uniforms. They too, would be dragging people out of their cars and beating them, if they had the "wrong" photo on the car window. So my job was to ditch the photo of the Shah, and put up the photo of Ayatollah Khomeini. Obviously I did a good job of it, because I'm still sitting here, talking about it. But now, Jason, thirty years later, doesn't want to risk trying to flee Bangkok, because one moment they encounter a Red Shirt mob, the next, the army, and the next, a Yellow Shirt mob. Looks like history really is cyclical. At least Jason is experienced, and has seen it all before. (photo is from The Guardian newspaper)