HYR gets political - a polemic.

"I think the rejoicing we are seeing today is not the celebration of a death, but the healing of a nation." 

- Anon Internet comment 

So bin Laden is dead thanks to the ass-kickery of the Navy SEALS.  Americans rejoice.  Teh FB is resounding with divisive "rhetoric".  Bells have been ringing all day on my campus.  Photographs of Americans bedecked in Stars and Stripes garb are plastered across the news and internet.  America!  Fuck yeah!

If this is the healing of a nation then it's akin to curing a death of a thousand cuts with a single Spongebob band-aid.

Ten years of war and for what?  I'm not belittling our fighting forces and never will - my problem lies with US foreign policies and penchant for international cluster fucks.  The SEALS kick ass and shoot the fuck out of a major terrorist - right on but earlier today a friend of mine said, "I didn't even know we were still hunting for him."  In class today I didn't hear a single word about bin Laden, nor did I hear or see anything bin Laden related while walking around campus.  Hell, I can't remember the last time I thought about bin Laden.  Personally I'm more focused on Libya and the impending doom that awaits Africa at the hands of the West and the Chinese.

Perhaps what bothers me the most about the FB and general internet currents is the worrying celebratory bloodlust of an American demographic.  It reminds me of the days when a fallen enemy's head would be paraded around on a pike through city streets, with uncivilized clods hurling shit and rotten vegetables at it.  Perhaps it was best bin Laden was buried at sea.

I wonder how the fruitcake marketing machine will cash in on bin Laden's death.  Are sales of toilet paper with bin Laden's face going to skyrocket?  Will "I'm Proud to be an American." ring from sea to shining sea? How soon until a video game comes out documenting the operation?

And, as so many international news sources have asked, now what?  After ten years of futile wars can our troops come home to their families?  Turn their spears into ploughshares?  Can the military spending be curtailed?  Can we as Americans learn to focus on a new day in America?  Can the right-wingers, tea-partiers, and assorted nutcases stop giving Americans of the Muslim faith shit?

I fucking doubt it.  May God have mercy on us all.