one good thing about clerics as political leaders: having direct access to the will of god, they are free of petty constraints such as rationality or reality.

Speaking in front of an audience of thousands that included President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he endorsed the president’s policies and insisted that the margin of victory — 11 million votes — accorded to Mr. Ahmadinejad in the official tally was so big that it could not have been falsified. “How can 11 million votes be replaced or changed?” he said.

now you might answer: well, you could burn the ballots. or just throw them in a landfill and announce any result you like, etc. but khamenei understands that, in fact, no election has ever been rigged anywhere, because that would theologically impossible. now that the protestors can get this clever argument - or at any rate, this lobotomized rhetorical question - on board, they will no doubt go home satisfied.

truly, as much as anything, this shows why you don't want to be a mullah, a priest, a rabbi. and why you don't want to be a king, a dictator, a supreme leader. and what you really don't want to be is both, because you undergo this long discipline in which the question is about texts and interpretations, and reasons or even basic ratiocination are entirely irrelevant. add extreme political power to that, in which whatever you might say, people just nod along, and pretty soon you're just spouting bullshit, expecting people to believe you. it's a personal disaster: you lose the ability to think at all. you're wise. but you're smart as a a shrubbery.