Shame on US

It’s been weeks since Americans poured onto the streets, crowing and cheering. At last, their nemesis’s blood spilled, they exhale. A man in a blanket, huddled over flickering images of himself, is gone. The stuff of American nightmares sleeps with the fishes. The world is better off now that we have another porn-riddled hard drive in custody. What kind of sick man keeps porn on his computer?

It’s been a while since Americans had a reason to feel good in recent memory, first their own black operations turned on them, literally blowing up in their faces sand dragging their sons to war. Next, nature bared its fangs and brought hell to the coast. Just when it couldn’t get any worse, their beloved free market system — the wooden stake in communism’s heart, fell apart in their hands, its splinters tearing the soft flesh there.

But it’s okay, folks. Your commander in chief saw a gap in the programming and took it. Between Will and Kate and the IMF Ripper — leave it to your singing, wisecracking Trump-trouncing number one to bring you a real episode of “24”. That’s right, voters — while you were sleeping, we snuck into a country without asking, and kicked down some goddamned doors and gun-fucked a couple of sack heads. See what we did for you? And we’re Democrats… imagine what the “Others” would have done?

In SA we throw toilets at each other to get votes. These guys are leagues ahead.

When does our own humanity become negotiable? Bin Laden was complicit in the death of thousands of Americans, and his ideology continued to put American lives at risk, that is not something that can ever be rationalised or belittled, or forgotten — but what about Ronald McDonald or George Bush? Read italics above with them in mind. Surely, if rules are to achieve anything, they must apply uniformly.

It’s safe to say that both clowns have killed thousands of innocent people in other countries too, and they aren’t alone, there are queues of people who fit the bill. At least OBL had a rationale, twisted as it was. Is it okay to kill indiscriminately for an obscene profit, instead of a belief … provided your “kill-team” is sanctioned by the right business unit?

Aren’t we teaching our children the message that Osama so misguidedly wrote on the wall by claiming justice was done in the dark on May 2?

If we disregard the law because we believe we are right, how are we different from the contents of a cream-coloured package now resting on the ocean floor?

And what is worse? Killing thousands of people or igniting a global bonfire of self-righteous vengeance? The fact that we feel able to decide is menacing.

Revenge makes a shit father, a lousy brother or god forbid, a lover. Sons and daughters, mothers and uncles may feel great for a day or two but what happens when they realise that all they have to show for their gaping hole is a slightly elevated pulse and a couple of hours of sensational TV?

And will the death of one fundamentalist (armed then enraged by the US, lest we forget) truly cure us of our terrors? Will this be the deterrent that will end the random acts of violent lunacy? His friends and followers are busy packing their dirty nails into brainwashed kids as you read. The disease mutates and becomes more deadly as we dance on a watery grave.

I might well be very wrong but the irony is savage: families of victims huddled in blankets, watching images of OBL, watching himself — for a moment, they become him — hateful, wronged, righteous and ultimately, impotent.