2011-05-02 10:56![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
digitaldiscipline
digitaldisciplineYou know what the news about OBL makes me feel? Tired.
I am tired of the post-9/11 mindset; of raw, naked American Imperialism; of the fact that the erosion of our personal freedoms in the wake of it meaning that yes, as a matter of fact, the terrorists HAVE won; of the jingoist xenophobia and religious shouting; of the whole sorry fucking mess of the world.
And I am still cynical; the political timing - hard on the heels of giving the middle finger to the Birther bullshit and exposing Trump for the hollow pretender he is at the press corps dinner, Obama's announcement was, coincidentally or not, on the anniversary of a much ballyhooed bit of political and theatrical farce.
The rest of my thoughts are well-said by Jay Lake here; behind a f-locked post, other friends put things well, thusly:
"I'm slightly disappointed in myself that my initial, most visceral reaction was "Good." More rationally, I had hoped he would be taken alive, so that he wouldn't become a martyr and so he could face some kind of international justice for his crimes. I'm thinking World Court at the Hague, to avoid the death penalty (see: martyr) and to avoid any shady Guantanamo dealings. More lives were lost in the hunt for him than he took, and I don't know how to square that. And on some level, simultaneously, some inner part of me was lusting for vengeance... for the culture of fear the U.S. has plunged itself into (though in fairness, we have only ourselves to blame for that one)."
and
"I'm having a hard time reconciling the political boogeyman with the death of an actual human, not least because he actually died a [few days] ago and they've been waiting on the announcement until they had conclusive DNA evidence - and also because this was IMO a justified death in battle."
We are a culture that is entirely too self-aware; people jokingly talked about thirty years from now saying, "Yes, honey, I was grading papers / playing video games / fucking around on Twitter when I heard about Osama bin Laden's death..."
I have no problem with humor; I myself wondered last night on twitter what all the fuss regarding One Big Llama was about. But he was made into The Enemy, larger than life, more hated than death, by the ravening media machine our culture has wrought (and don't for a minute think that this wasn't fostered by people with agendas to push that having a capital-A Adversary made so much easier to go for); that has, as much as anything, changed the nature of the attention to his demise, and I think a lot of people are reacting to the political bogeyman and figurehead, rather than any kind of actual, real-world consequence of one man's end.
Like I said, tired.
I am tired of the post-9/11 mindset; of raw, naked American Imperialism; of the fact that the erosion of our personal freedoms in the wake of it meaning that yes, as a matter of fact, the terrorists HAVE won; of the jingoist xenophobia and religious shouting; of the whole sorry fucking mess of the world.
And I am still cynical; the political timing - hard on the heels of giving the middle finger to the Birther bullshit and exposing Trump for the hollow pretender he is at the press corps dinner, Obama's announcement was, coincidentally or not, on the anniversary of a much ballyhooed bit of political and theatrical farce.
The rest of my thoughts are well-said by Jay Lake here; behind a f-locked post, other friends put things well, thusly:
"I'm slightly disappointed in myself that my initial, most visceral reaction was "Good." More rationally, I had hoped he would be taken alive, so that he wouldn't become a martyr and so he could face some kind of international justice for his crimes. I'm thinking World Court at the Hague, to avoid the death penalty (see: martyr) and to avoid any shady Guantanamo dealings. More lives were lost in the hunt for him than he took, and I don't know how to square that. And on some level, simultaneously, some inner part of me was lusting for vengeance... for the culture of fear the U.S. has plunged itself into (though in fairness, we have only ourselves to blame for that one)."
and
"I'm having a hard time reconciling the political boogeyman with the death of an actual human, not least because he actually died a [few days] ago and they've been waiting on the announcement until they had conclusive DNA evidence - and also because this was IMO a justified death in battle."
We are a culture that is entirely too self-aware; people jokingly talked about thirty years from now saying, "Yes, honey, I was grading papers / playing video games / fucking around on Twitter when I heard about Osama bin Laden's death..."
I have no problem with humor; I myself wondered last night on twitter what all the fuss regarding One Big Llama was about. But he was made into The Enemy, larger than life, more hated than death, by the ravening media machine our culture has wrought (and don't for a minute think that this wasn't fostered by people with agendas to push that having a capital-A Adversary made so much easier to go for); that has, as much as anything, changed the nature of the attention to his demise, and I think a lot of people are reacting to the political bogeyman and figurehead, rather than any kind of actual, real-world consequence of one man's end.
Like I said, tired.
