bodlon | We have done the thing we vowed to do

Sometime after 9/11, I made it a rule not to talk about 9/11 very much.

It isn't that the gravity of it and what it led to doesn't rattle me, but as shocked and upset as I was in September 2001, my own experience -- hearing something on the radio, then seeing something on television, then going to work and listening to the radio some more because the Internet had essentially collapsed under the sheer load of traffic -- does not compare to what went down in NYC, DC (well, technically Arlington), or Pennsylvania.

Basically I'm a bystander who saw a good friend get hurt. When a friend gets hurt, my instinct is to want to help that friend. That's compassion. But the way we ascertain the sort of help that friend needs is through wisdom. Without it, we go off half-cocked, or we make what happened to our friends about ourselves instead.

Either way, I don't want to be that guy. I've seen how that goes down, even in the Midwest. It looks a lot like bricks going through the windows of a naturalized citizen's coffee shop window and a whole lot of American flags.

So I am ambivalent about the whole Bin Laden thing.

There was no question that the man did a monstrous thing for misguided reasons. I just don't think his death at the hands of our SEALs is necessarily a reason for jubilation when so much of the oppression and fear we've been feeling for ten years comes from things we've layered onto ourselves. Al Quaeda killed a few thousand of us and tore up some buildings in an afternoon. We've destroyed two governments and killed hundreds of thousands looking for him. And our soldiers can't even come home yet.

The analogy feels trite in the face of a world so angry and broken and real, and I'm hesitant to say this, but after 24 hours reflection I'm feeling a hell of a lot less like Captain America than I am Batman this morning. In case you haven't been paying attention, that would be the same Batman whose central lesson is that vengeance never takes away the things that hurt.

We have done the thing we vowed to do, and it may be that it is important that we did. But now that we have, maybe it's time to figure out what else it is we're doing to ourselves, and to the rest of the world, and whether its worth the cost.

~*~

I haven't written about the tornadoes yet. Partly this is because I've been trying to make sense of them; the last time there was this much devastation from storms like this was apparently before I was born. We're far from the worst of it -- that was mostly South and East of us -- but parts of Missouri and Illinois are struggling with floods, and the airport I've used twice to fly to Gallifrey One sustained a lot of damage. Still, this is a scrape on the knee compared to Tuscaloosa.

Here's some things you can do to help:

- As always, fandom auctions! Check out Help The South.
- A useful list of charities, including groups on the ground in Alabama.

~*~

- The Oxford English Dictionary has found a usage of OMG from 1917. This delights me.

- It you're unfamiliar with the White House Correspondents Dinner, you owe it to yourself to find out more. It's a necessary annual burst of levity, and President Obama kind of outdid himself. Video may be worth it just to see Donald Trump scowling.

- This week somebody pointed me to the "Where You At?" bioregional quiz. As somebody trying to get to know the ground under my feet better, I was pretty gobsmacked. Something to think about, I suppose.

- I never thought I'd want to start buying from J. Crew, and yet. And yes, this is the same company at which conservatives freaked the hell out when the catalog included a mom painting her son's toenails.

This post has been mirrored from Christian A. Young's Dimlight Archive. To see it in its original format, visit dimlightarchive.com