So, you might have heard that Sunday was a pretty good news day.
1) Elation. Full disclosure, this is my camp. I actually saw a video last night of people chanting “USA! USA!” in a stadium and didn’t think they looked like they were at some creepy Soviet rally circa 1950.
2) Conspiracy theory. These are people who hate good news. Mostly, the popular story seems to be that we killed Bin Laden’s double, or something. This is so bananas, I don’t even know what to do with it. How do you argue with a person who thinks that the most complicated version of history must be right? I think the only thing to do is to suggest they stay away from TV and movies for a month. Maybe all forms of narrative storytelling. Because clearly, someone wants a twist ending.
3) Weirdly displaced grief. OK, OK, I get that it’s weird to celebrate a person’s death. I understand that it’s not the spiritually evolved stance to take. But maybe let’s not pretend that we killed Bambi’s mom. This was a mass murderer of innocent men, women, and children. Maybe Jesus and the Buddha wouldn’t have been as totally psyched as I am right now, but last time I checked, I wasn’t Jesus or the Buddha, so … whee!
Also, for those of you who were wondering, Sgt. Lucky and I totally danced around the apartment to the Ewok Celebration song last night when we heard the news.
At best, it feels like VE Day on a smaller scale. At worst, it feels like a largely symbolic milestone, unimportant in the larger geopolitical scale – this was one guy, after all. As soon as I get down about that, though, I think of the flowering of freedom that I hope will come from the Arab Spring and I feel better.