A woman holds the portrait of Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi, accused of “corruption on Earth” during the demonstration against Iranian repression in Lyon, France on Jan. 8, 2023. Photo by Robert Deyrail/Gamma-Rapho.

I’m more confused than usual this week, and not just by people making six-point turnarounds to back into a parking spot.

Rendering: Adam Pardee/STAFF.

Mixed up with news video showing MAGA cultists claiming the U.S. needs a dictator and former attorney general Bill Barr telling CNN that Donald Trump rambled out loud about executing the disloyal, a story from Iran should be nearly as disturbing.

We’re used to powerful people in other countries doing things that seem unimaginable in the U.S. The scary part is how we’re inching closer and closer to accepting that kind of people and their methods here. But it should still bother people that supposedly “civilized” countries and major players on the global stage still execute people for speaking against a government.

Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi was sentenced to death for his involvement in anti-government protests in Iran in 2022, his lawyer Amir Raesian posted on the app formerly known as Twitter last week.

The protests were over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody, after she was arrested for not wearing a headscarf. Because God doesn’t like women’s hair.

Salehi was allegedly tortured and put into solitary confinement following his arrest; two methods not entirely unknown in the U.S. So maybe it’s not a big deal around this part of the planet anymore. Especially since about half the U.S. in 2024 seems OK with stifling dissent on college campuses for the sole reason they, or our government, don’t agree with it.

According to CNN, an Iranian court recently upheld a verdict of “corruption on Earth” and issued the maximum punishment of death, according to Iranian pro-reform outlets Shargh and Entekhab.

I don’t know where else but Earth one can be corrupt and, strictly speaking, I don’t think Iran has the definition of corruption right. I think they mean “saying stuff the government doesn’t like hearing.”

I also don’t know Salehi’s music and it doesn’t matter. We should all admire someone who questions an oppressive government that believes in governing according to what it imagines its supreme being wants it to act. Then again, that’s kind of where at least part of the U.S. is headed.

But I have a soft spot for artists who care about old-fashioned nonsense like freedom and the common good and injects those feelings into their art, especially music. Until we start acting like this sort of idiocy isn’t normal, it continues to become just that.

Salehi, 32, has been critical of the Iranian regime in his music and social media. He was briefly released from prison last year before police violently arrested him again and sent him back.

Citing a statement published by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, CNN said this happened after he appeared in a video in which he said he was tortured and placed in solitary confinement for 252 days following his arrest in October 2022.

I’m thinking personal injury attorneys don’t fare very well in Iran.

Neither do rappers. Kurdish-Iranian rapper Saman Yasin, who was also arrested during the 2022 protests, was transferred to a psychiatric hospital twice in less than a year, CNN reported, citing pro-reform news outlet IranWire. He was later sentenced to prison for five years.

The U.N. has condemned Iran’s treatment of both men. CNN said Salehi’s political sponsor in Europe, German Member of Parliament Ye-One Rhie, said the sentence was “absurd and inhumane.”

“It is still completely unclear how this verdict came about,” she posted online Wednesday. “It is unbelievable how irresponsibly and arbitrarily the Iranian regime treats defendants. It is impossible to recognize the rule of law in the chaos of the courts in charge.”

Salehi’s case is like so many others we see from afar but, to which, we pay little attention. Most of the world doesn’t execute people anymore. The U.S., like Iran, is one of the handful of countries still allowing its government to kill its own citizens (ironically, the people who scream loudest for the government to have less power are the same ones who want it to make life and death decisions about capital punishment and abortion).

Could people be executed for their opinions about the government here? Until recently I would’ve laughed at the idea. But I also laughed when a loudmouthed reality show host who admitted he committed sexual misconduct ran for president. I’m no longer ruling anything out.

Maybe I’m coming from a strange place, where people once assumed Iran isn’t the good guy, but I can’t be sure of anything anymore. I used to assume we didn’t like theocracies, didn’t trust Russia, and didn’t admire dictators, but up is down, crazy is sane, and rapists are presidential frontrunners, so … I got nothing.

But I still take comfort in knowing brave artists are still trying to save the world. Even if they know they can get killed for it.