Forgetting Bin Laden

Calhoun’s Cannons for May 14, 2001

It’s hard to imagine how unremembered we all become,/ How quickly all that we’ve done / Is unremembered and unforgiven, / 
                                         Charles Wright

The first thought I had when I heard the news that Osama Bin Laden had been killed was the same response when I hear that some old, forgotten movie star has died: Huh? I thought they died years ago. This was followed by the all purpose, Good riddance to bad rubbish, followed by astonishment when the jumbled story of the raid came tumbling out: Meh. Navy SEALs. Well, of course. When you want extraordinary courage and breathtaking competence that’s who you call, the SEALs.

But for me, a joyous celebration over Bin Laden’s death never came. What came instead to overwhelm any sense of satisfaction was lingering sadness and fatigue. It had all been such a pointless waste that could never be undone and now it was all too late. Those twin dark stars, Bush and Bin Laden, in a deadly call and response, had unleashed a rain of death: Murderous phony Jihad colliding with the cynically ginned-up lethal God of Imperial PNAC War. Shock and awe, baby! And now the body count is beyond what either man could ever possibly atone or answer for. No real justice for the dead now. Not really. There’s simply too many of them for that.

Instead, we have to settle for a majestically executed kill/capture, then it’s time to change the channel. The dead are forever gone and Bin Laden is soooo yesterday; a pointless old man holed up in a ratty house, dying his grey beard for his recruiting tapes and dreaming of paradise, while his planned-for Islamic caliphate went all Facebook on him and brought an Arab Spring, not with guns but with cell phones. And Bush has holed up in the Texas countryside, cutting shrubbery while historians unravel all the lies and the politicians who aided and abetted his misbegotten war have changed the subject. Time to move on. Game over.

Except for the dead and maimed. They remain unwanted guests at the celebration whispering, “Tell me, after all, was it worth it?” And, really, what do all these evil schemes ever ultimately bring to their architects but failure, death, and ignominious Saturday Night Live jokes.

Yet it never ends. In another dark corner of the world, another fool is plotting paradise and the fools who will follow after him are gathering their knives and clutching malice to their hearts, all of them repeatedly slouching towards Bethlehem in one long, endless line. It’s the Groundhog Day of history – nobody learns anything.

All of which accounts for my sense of fatigue, no doubt. No balloons and noise-makers for me. Just another sad re-run to be followed by a re-make. While I keep hoping that somebody will come to tell me that what I’ve been watching all these years was meant to be a road-runner cartoon, not Macbeth, but due to some unfortunate technical glitch, both Wile E. Coyote and McDuff’s slaughtered children keep staying dead.

If there is a glimmer of hope in any of this, I must find it in the breathtaking competence of the Navy SEALs. And I can only hope that President Obama’s ridding the Spook Agencies of political cronies and hacks will return them to a professional competency that’s focused more on counterterrorism in a troubled world ripe for jihadi picking.

I can also hope that perhaps the years-long insanity that resulted in our national nervous breakdown when those twin towers fell is over. We desperately needed cool competency then. What we got instead was incompetent “hair on fire” bunglers in meltdown mode. If this Navy SEALs operation is an indication that icy focus has returned, then it’s possible the nation’s fever has finally broken.

When Bin Laden unleashed those planes against the towers, he opened a Pandora’s box of call and response terrors. But in the myth, after all the destruction, there always remained in the bottom of the box, one item: Hope.

Hope in the form of cool, hope in the form of seriousness of purpose, hope in the form of those cell phones and Twitters from the kids in Tahrir Square. It’s their future that’s being born now. They have a chance to break this particular Ground Hog Day and write a better script.

Come to think of it, we all do.

The Prez is an American?

OMG! President Obama was born in Hawaii?  Like, he's an American?  OMG! OMG!

Well, not to worry.  The Donald is on the case, taking credit for being the moving force to get the President to release the "long form" birth certificate to "prove" he was born in Hawaii, not Kenya.  And, right on target, he immediately brought up the idea that this long form birth certificate might not be legitimate, like it could be forged, faked, after all the CIA can create any kind of document you want, documents that look real as can be. Which gave all the looney birthers more talking points to keep the whole silly game afloat for another news cycle.

And La Donald also made sure to also shift the talking point quickly  to Obama's other documents, like Obama's college papers, thereby tossing in the dog-whistle question of whether Obama deserved to get into Harvard or was he just another quota black guy taking unfair advantage, and a crummy student, to boot, because everyone knows blacks couldn't possibly be smart enough to get to Harvard on their own merit.  And La Donald should know, he's already made it clear that he's on great terms with "the blacks."

La Donald, according to recent polls, is leading the pack as a presidential contender among Republicans, the party that gave you Sarah Palin as Veep.  Seriously.  Sarah Palin as Veep, one heartbeat away from the presidency. Those poll numbers on La Donald speaks volumes about what the Republican Party has become, with only questions left:  Was this Republican racist stupidity caused by an infectious agent that spread like wildfire, killing off sane Republicans like some awful Black Plague?  Or was it some kind of degenerative genetic problem inherited from, say inbreeding too closely with John Birchers?

And if it's an infectious agent, spread from infected Republican politicos, Fake News talking heads and K-street lobbyists via corporate media and the internet, how badly has it infected normal Americans?  20%?  30% ? Past a certain tipping point, stupid societies simply can't stand.  They suffer what might be called "colony collapse."

So, there's the question: How far has venal stupidity spread throughout this great land of ours?  From the numbers I'm looking at, it doesn't look good.  Well, thank God we have La Donald on the case.  He'll save the Republic!

How Do You Spell Chutzpah?  

Tribune headline story yesterday:  "Parents file wrongful death suit."  Twenty-one year-old Cal Poly student wandered out on Highway 101 at 1 a.m. near the Santa Rosa St. intersection and gets hit by a car and killed.  It's later found that the kid's system was loaded with marijuana, alcohol and cocaine.  So his parents sue the city and the highway and (more sensibly) the Doctor who "prescribed" the marijuana.

Kid gets stoned, gets killed, parents sue the road.

Here's who should sue somebody or other, including the parents of the kid who wandered out in the highway: The poor man who hit the stoned kid appearing suddenly in the middle of the night in the middle of the highway where no kid should be at any time, night or day.  If anybody was permanently injured, it's that guy.  For the rest of his life.  If somebody's looking for a victim, that's the guy.  

Speaking of Chutzpah

"Hey, Pre-Paid Los Osos Sewer Assessment Folks?  How's THIS taste?" asks Ron Crawford over at http://www.sewerwatch.blogspot.com/.  Insult to grave injury to poor Lososians.  A disaster that didn't have to happen, for which they will pay repeatedly and excessively, while the architects of this disaster either walked away scott free, or are once again in charge and are, uh, charging everything twice, while the watchdogs snooze at their post.  Amazing, all those little dots, while those who should be making this right, blandly turn away. Talk to the hand.  It's Chinatown.