Monday, September 10, 2012

'Ware Nemesis, Obama

Courtesy of the Dish, a tweet from Jeffrey Goldberg in immediate reaction to Joe Biden's Convention paeaen to Barack Obama, Osama-killer:
I've been told I'm a bloodthirsty warmongering neoconservative, but for whatever reason, I just don't like all this bragging about killing.
For the record, I was on the same page. Below, excerpts from that section of Biden's speech, and my immediate reactions on Twitter.

Barack understood that the search for bin Laden was about a lot more than taking a monstrous leader off the battlefield. It was about righting an unspeakable wrong, healing a nearly unbearable wound in America's heart ..

When [Romney] was asked about bin Laden in 2007, he said, and I quote, "it's not worth moving heaven and earth, and spending billions of dollars, just trying to catch one person."

He was wrong. If you understood that America's heart had to be healed, you would have done exactly what the President did. And you too would have moved heaven and earth--to hunt down bin Laden, and bring him to justice.


Revenge is about righting an unspeakable wrong? Healing? Unseemly. p.s. Chanting is worse 

And because of all the actions he took, because of the calls he made--and because of the grit and determination of American workers--and the unparalled bravery of our special forces--we can now proudly say— Osama Bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive.

'ware nemesis, crowing over the dead










 I am reminded of Ursula Le Guin's fictional anarchist philosopher Odo, spiritual founder of an impossibly successful anarchist society in The Dispossessed:
“For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think.”
 That is in a sense true. But I don't think a functioning society can be based on that assumption.

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