June 12, 2009 was the date of the latest Iranian political crisis, a coup. This coup was special, however. Not only was this coup a military act to seize power, but it is also an act that completes the Iranian revolution in a very ironic fashion. The last remains of those who began the revolution and developed its ideology have been wiped out. Thirty years after the revolution’s victory, the revolution finally ate all its first children.

Overt evil is easy to discuss. It’s banal evil that is hard to acknowledge. And you can’t confess to a sin until that sin has been acknowledged. Churches spent the rest of the twentieth century acknowledging the sins of genocide. However, in her writings, Hannah Arendt, who witnessed the trials against the Nazis, wrote about how the Nazi war criminals resisted acknowledging that their boring, nine-to-five office jobs of record keeping or laboratory work on the use of chemicals in the gas chambers had actually been evil. In her book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Arendt chronicles the wartime activities and trial of German Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann, who claimed that he was only doing his bureaucratic job as a transportation logician.

In the November issue of the New Yorker, staff writer and New America Foundation Fellow, Margaret Talbot attempted to dispel some common misperceptions concerning evangelicals and sexuality. In her article Talbot queries the evangelical reaction to Bristol Palin’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy only to discover that the dilemma endeared the Republican base (read: evangelicals) to Governor Palin even further. Turns out, evangelicals are hardly shocked to discover their kids are having sex, even the ones who’ve made a commitment to sexual abstinence before marriage. Unlike their Blue-State counterparts, however, evangelicals are unlikely to supply their young women with either contraception or abortion procedures. And further unlike their cultural nemeses, they do not balk at the challenge of welcoming a new life into their fold.

It’s about that time again. Time for certain groups of people to make sure we all know whom we can thank for the Thanksgiving-to-New-Year’s orgy of shopping. I speak, of course of those ubiquitous buttons that remind us that “Jesus is the Reason for the Season!”

On some level, I appreciate the message that I want to read into this little declaration: chill out, for God’s sake (literally, I suppose), and ditch this assumption that a kid was brought into the world on angel song and with the adoration of foreign kings, so that we could get a great deal on that sweater for Uncle Fred. Even better, take that assertion one step further, and drop out of the present-buying frenzy altogether. Instead, if you’re of the religious persuasion that celebrates the story of Jesus, spend the day with your family, have a nice meal together, invite someone who needs it to share your warmth and your food and your conversation. If the cheery little mark of identity is worn to convey that sort of message, well then, more power to its bearer.

Remember that really nice girl who greeted you warmly as a potential friend when you first arrived at college? Remember how she conscientiously invited you to dinner, or to study, or to her Christian fellowship activity? Remember the conversations about religion that you thought were a precursor to sharing secrets among friends? But then you expressed a different opinion, or you joined a liberal club, or you started to explore your sexuality, and suddenly, you felt a sharp pain in your back?  Betrayed by some evangelical whom you thought was a friend?

Images of “Martyrdom” dominate Tehran’s urban space. State-sponsored and hand-painted by artists close to the regime, they provide an insider’s view of the Islamic Republic’s psyche at a time when Iran makes daily headlines. Thematically, the murals feature images of the fathers of the Islamic Revolution and martyrs of the Iran-Iraq war, as well as explicitly anti-U.S. and anti-Israel messages. The primary objective is to document and present images that are part of Tehranians’ daily visual experience and of which people in the U.S. are largely oblivious.

One small viral video likewise typifies this longing for transformation, the will.i.am music video, “Yes We Can.” This musical alteration of Barack Obama’s speech, itself a riff on Dolores Huerta’s classic “Sí se puede,” promises change in the moment that we move to the ballot box and vote for Senator Obama. Parts fascism and Internet youth culture, the video moves us to conflate the solitary moment of a vote cast with instantaneous transformation into the change we seek.

This year, while serving as a chaperone for college students on a nearly two-week trip to the Holy Land, our Palestinian tour guide pointed out that our bus was now on the Road to Jericho. I sat up in shock; the Jericho Road had now become real and covered in asphalt. I looked at the road, stunned at how much it looked like the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Except, in the middle of the road was a huge concrete wall that seemed to stretch almost ten stories into the sky.