Some friends took me out to roller derby, and a grand time was had by all. I enjoyed it much more than my previous exposures to professional wrestling. There was a greater emphasis on scoring, and a diminished emphasis on fighting or inflicting suffering, which is why I prefer women's college hockey to professional hockey. I cheered until I was hoarse. I encourage you to attend a roller derby spectacle in your municipality.
I know what you're thinking: sure, you might enjoy watching and even cheering for a roller derby team, but what happens if you suddenly get dragged away, strapped into roller derby gear and forced to compete? Specifically, what could you possibly use for a Roller Derby Name?
If you can't come up with one on your own, I recommend you choose one of these swell Roller Derby Names I ground into paper with graphite rods:
Elektra Cute
Skates O'Frenic
H P Shovecraft
Kata Hari
Hello Gritty
Rainbow Smash
Apple Smack
Blueberry Toughen
Mitz Krieg
Queen B-cup
Thugubus
Rainbow Smite
Briana Kracker
Sunday, March 3, 2013
Saturday, November 24, 2012
English Latin
If you do something with someone else, you have Cohorts. But if you work alone, you are logically a single Hort.
If you reschedule something to a later date, you are Postponing it. However, if you want to reschedule something to an earlier date, logically you must be Preponing it. This word has reportedly been adopted by English speakers in India, and comes from the Latin praepono.
Please direct any complaints to whoever keeps putting Latin into English.
If you reschedule something to a later date, you are Postponing it. However, if you want to reschedule something to an earlier date, logically you must be Preponing it. This word has reportedly been adopted by English speakers in India, and comes from the Latin praepono.
Please direct any complaints to whoever keeps putting Latin into English.
Monday, July 9, 2012
I Love the Post Office
If you've ever ordered anything through the mail, you know the anticipation and thrill of getting packages delivered to your door. Ever since I was a kid, I've loved ordering things through the mail from far-off places. Things I couldn't find in the retail shops in my small town.
Now, thanks to the power of the Internet, this becomes even easier: no more browsing paper catalogs, no more order forms. I add stuff to a virtual cart and check out. Toys not available in local toy shops, Hawaiian shirts--from the great state of Hawaii, books and CDs not prominent nor profitable enough to pay for the retail shelf space, small-run items direct from their creators... All these things have enriched my lifestyle tremendously.
And whenever I can, I specify delivery through the U.S. Postal Service.
Of course, I love writing letters. And after I moved out of the house, I started sending out greeting cards during the holiday season. Now I mail out over 100 holiday cards to friends and family every year, hand-made with a home-built linoleum block printing press constructed from some old boards and a door hinge--Martha Stewart fans, take note! I also mail out gifts: for the holidays, for birthdays, sometimes just because friend or family has a need. I love tracking the package through the Postal Service's website. I love picking out beautiful stamps that reflect my interests and personality.
And I do all this through my neighborhood post office, conveniently located on my way to work.
This entire essay might seem silly and inane, praising the Post Office like I were praising warm woolen mittens and whiskers on kittens (I've already covered brown paper packages wrapped up in string), were it not for the following: the U.S. Post Office was created under Benjamin Franklin on Wednesday, July 26, 1775. You might expect conservatives would support this agency of the United States of America which predates our Declaration of Independence, but in fact our venerable U.S. Postal Service has been under attack for years. The Privatization Mania so inescapable under George W Bush, which rallies under the banner of "The Government Can't Do Anything Right," took a big swipe at the Postal Service in 2006 with the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which forces the Postal Service to pay ahead 75 years' worth of medical expenses (a requirement no other agency is required to satisfy), thereby creating an artificial annual budget shortfall, and forcing the Postal Service to take drastic measures to cut costs, including cutting staff, closing facilities, and limiting service.
With the economic decline during the George W Bush presidency comes a decline in postal traffic: fewer people can afford to purchase merchandise, meaning fewer parcel shipments; fewer job openings mean fewer resumes going out; with lower incomes, letter postage becomes an extravagance. Reduced education budgets translate to reduced ability or desire to write letters. Technology drives more customers to cheap email and "texting." Accordingly, the Post Office has simply had less business, which further contributes to the Postal Service's budget shortfall. I want to reiterate that an economic downturn is precisely the wrong time to cut budgets on basic government services, particularly those which employ lots of people. And consider the fact that the Postal Service built many local post offices in really convenient locations for dirt-cheap prices; now that businesses have built up around the local post office, that local post office is on prime real estate; if the Postal Service closes and sells that facility, it may be impossible to buy the building back or build a decent replacement at an affordable price.
The 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act has pushed the Postal Service into an untenable position leading to decline, as I suspect was the original intention, but this decline is not inevitable. Senator Al Franken of Minnesota has made efforts to prevent many of these proposed post office closings in the State of Minnesota. If you enjoy the benefits of the United States Postal Service and you don't want it to go away, you can tell your Senators and Representatives...
...using the U.S. Postal Service.
Now, thanks to the power of the Internet, this becomes even easier: no more browsing paper catalogs, no more order forms. I add stuff to a virtual cart and check out. Toys not available in local toy shops, Hawaiian shirts--from the great state of Hawaii, books and CDs not prominent nor profitable enough to pay for the retail shelf space, small-run items direct from their creators... All these things have enriched my lifestyle tremendously.
And whenever I can, I specify delivery through the U.S. Postal Service.
Of course, I love writing letters. And after I moved out of the house, I started sending out greeting cards during the holiday season. Now I mail out over 100 holiday cards to friends and family every year, hand-made with a home-built linoleum block printing press constructed from some old boards and a door hinge--Martha Stewart fans, take note! I also mail out gifts: for the holidays, for birthdays, sometimes just because friend or family has a need. I love tracking the package through the Postal Service's website. I love picking out beautiful stamps that reflect my interests and personality.
And I do all this through my neighborhood post office, conveniently located on my way to work.
This entire essay might seem silly and inane, praising the Post Office like I were praising warm woolen mittens and whiskers on kittens (I've already covered brown paper packages wrapped up in string), were it not for the following: the U.S. Post Office was created under Benjamin Franklin on Wednesday, July 26, 1775. You might expect conservatives would support this agency of the United States of America which predates our Declaration of Independence, but in fact our venerable U.S. Postal Service has been under attack for years. The Privatization Mania so inescapable under George W Bush, which rallies under the banner of "The Government Can't Do Anything Right," took a big swipe at the Postal Service in 2006 with the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which forces the Postal Service to pay ahead 75 years' worth of medical expenses (a requirement no other agency is required to satisfy), thereby creating an artificial annual budget shortfall, and forcing the Postal Service to take drastic measures to cut costs, including cutting staff, closing facilities, and limiting service.
With the economic decline during the George W Bush presidency comes a decline in postal traffic: fewer people can afford to purchase merchandise, meaning fewer parcel shipments; fewer job openings mean fewer resumes going out; with lower incomes, letter postage becomes an extravagance. Reduced education budgets translate to reduced ability or desire to write letters. Technology drives more customers to cheap email and "texting." Accordingly, the Post Office has simply had less business, which further contributes to the Postal Service's budget shortfall. I want to reiterate that an economic downturn is precisely the wrong time to cut budgets on basic government services, particularly those which employ lots of people. And consider the fact that the Postal Service built many local post offices in really convenient locations for dirt-cheap prices; now that businesses have built up around the local post office, that local post office is on prime real estate; if the Postal Service closes and sells that facility, it may be impossible to buy the building back or build a decent replacement at an affordable price.
The 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act has pushed the Postal Service into an untenable position leading to decline, as I suspect was the original intention, but this decline is not inevitable. Senator Al Franken of Minnesota has made efforts to prevent many of these proposed post office closings in the State of Minnesota. If you enjoy the benefits of the United States Postal Service and you don't want it to go away, you can tell your Senators and Representatives...
...using the U.S. Postal Service.
Kristofer Straub's "Starslip:" a space (and time) odyssey
Kristofer Straub is a web cartoonist raised by 2 engineers. Engineers are the members of society who envision and design our future, so it is hardly surprising that Straub should be steeped in science fiction. Sometime around 2005, Kristofer Straub started a webcomic that would eventually become "Starslip." It started simply enough: a fussy nebbish of a museum curator running an interstellar art museum--like a library "bookmobile" showing Earth's greatest artworks to other cultures of the galaxy, if that bookmobile were something like the "Enterprise" from Star Trek--in a gag-a-day format. The story features short story arcs: a week-long story here, 2 weeks-long there, but things change when the museum curator falls in love with a beautiful princess from the moons of Jupiter.
The story arcs get longer. Characters who were once introduced as throw-away one-joke characters get long, interconnecting plots.
The starship travels in 2 different modes: a slow mode with (nuclear fusion rocket?) propulsion through regular space; and a fast mode which allows the vessel to transpose itself interdimensionally with another vessel in a similar timeline. Basically, the ships' computers find a parallel universe where almost everything is identical to the current universe, except that parallel vessel is parked where you want to be, and you're parked where that parallel vessel wants to be. Then, your 2 vessels "trade places" interdimensionally, using no rocket fuel. This form of transportation is known as "Starshift" or "Starslip" drive. Unfortunately, a big problem lurks in the "ALMOST everything is identical" specification: in one universe, the curator is courting the beautiful princess of Jupiter; but then the curator "Starslips" to a universe wherein that princess has died tragically.
Now our unimpressive curator has a mission in his life, and we witness him becoming a tragic hero. He must find some way to get back to his princess: the one love of his life, but the computer predicts it will be years--perhaps lifetimes--before they ever find the right parallel universe. Our hero starts breaking rules and stepping on toes in order to get back to his true love. He earns some powerful and villainous enemies, and overcomes great obstacles. Many strips no longer feature a joke in the final panel, instead punctuating with melodrama or pathos.
During the last year of Starslip, the loose threads and disposable characters we once thought disconnected finally tie into the main story. The end becomes a tremendous dramatic climax to what was once a gag-a-day satire comic strip.
I say "last year" and "end" because Starslip officially ended on June 15th, 2012. Sometimes comic strips (especially webcomics) simply end because the cartoonist gets busy with other activities or the cartoonist runs out of ideas, but Starslip ends with an actual conclusion. In 2006, Straub and Starslip won awards, but in my opinion, the final year was really the best year of Starslip.
You can read Starslip for free on the web, http://www.starslip.com/, or you can pay the cartoonist to send you bound volumes of the entire run of the strip on paper. Buy them. Give them as gifts to the sci-fi fan in your life.
Now, if only the cartoonist would please draw characters with noses...
The story arcs get longer. Characters who were once introduced as throw-away one-joke characters get long, interconnecting plots.
The starship travels in 2 different modes: a slow mode with (nuclear fusion rocket?) propulsion through regular space; and a fast mode which allows the vessel to transpose itself interdimensionally with another vessel in a similar timeline. Basically, the ships' computers find a parallel universe where almost everything is identical to the current universe, except that parallel vessel is parked where you want to be, and you're parked where that parallel vessel wants to be. Then, your 2 vessels "trade places" interdimensionally, using no rocket fuel. This form of transportation is known as "Starshift" or "Starslip" drive. Unfortunately, a big problem lurks in the "ALMOST everything is identical" specification: in one universe, the curator is courting the beautiful princess of Jupiter; but then the curator "Starslips" to a universe wherein that princess has died tragically.
Now our unimpressive curator has a mission in his life, and we witness him becoming a tragic hero. He must find some way to get back to his princess: the one love of his life, but the computer predicts it will be years--perhaps lifetimes--before they ever find the right parallel universe. Our hero starts breaking rules and stepping on toes in order to get back to his true love. He earns some powerful and villainous enemies, and overcomes great obstacles. Many strips no longer feature a joke in the final panel, instead punctuating with melodrama or pathos.
During the last year of Starslip, the loose threads and disposable characters we once thought disconnected finally tie into the main story. The end becomes a tremendous dramatic climax to what was once a gag-a-day satire comic strip.
I say "last year" and "end" because Starslip officially ended on June 15th, 2012. Sometimes comic strips (especially webcomics) simply end because the cartoonist gets busy with other activities or the cartoonist runs out of ideas, but Starslip ends with an actual conclusion. In 2006, Straub and Starslip won awards, but in my opinion, the final year was really the best year of Starslip.
You can read Starslip for free on the web, http://www.starslip.com/, or you can pay the cartoonist to send you bound volumes of the entire run of the strip on paper. Buy them. Give them as gifts to the sci-fi fan in your life.
Now, if only the cartoonist would please draw characters with noses...
Expect More Positivity
I just noticed how negative many of my previous blog entries are. I was reminded of the Kevin Spacey character in the 1995 movie "Seven;" Morgan Freeman's character reads the Spacey's character's journals, and he finds an endless river of negativity and disgust. No wonder Spacey's character became a sociopathic serial killer! He hates everything!
Wait a minute... What does that say about me?
"Yeah, that Anton was a quiet guy... Kept to himself a lot. Never figured he'd be the type to destroy an entire planet with a Doomsday Laser. Then I read his blog."
I'm not really so negative, I'm just venting; unfortunately, I don't have a klatch of ladyfriends (nor a support group) who I feel comfortable enough to vent this stuff with. So I post it here as therapy.
So I will try to post only positive things here for a while. Eventually, I hope to have a 50/50 mix of positive and negative material.
Wait a minute... What does that say about me?
"Yeah, that Anton was a quiet guy... Kept to himself a lot. Never figured he'd be the type to destroy an entire planet with a Doomsday Laser. Then I read his blog."
I'm not really so negative, I'm just venting; unfortunately, I don't have a klatch of ladyfriends (nor a support group) who I feel comfortable enough to vent this stuff with. So I post it here as therapy.
So I will try to post only positive things here for a while. Eventually, I hope to have a 50/50 mix of positive and negative material.
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Fifty Shades of Black
I just finished reading Liane Merciel's "Nightglass." This is a "Pathfinder Tales" fantasy novel, meaning it takes place in Paizo's "Pathfinder" fantasy role-playing game (FRPG) world known as "Golarion." Of course, you will probably expect this to suck; after all, it's just there to sell a product, right? Just like the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" cartoon show was a show-length commercial for plastic toys, right? But many of these "Pathfinder Tales" novels feature excellent writing, characterization, and stories.
I confess that I am not an impartial judge, because I already like the "Pathfinder" FRPG. If you can't stand the trappings of "Dungeons & Dragons," you probably won't like this novel; the novel features swords, fantastic humanoid races, wizards, and monsters. If you can get past that hurdle, there is another hurdle: the first 100-odd pages describe oppressive life in an evil kingdom beholden to a dark, alien deity from another dimension. If that isn't unappealing enough, this kingdom's ritual torture and disfigurement is graphically described through several chapters; this was the big hurdle for me, and the inspiration for my review's title (a reference to the popular sadomasochistic romance novel "Fifty Shades of Grey," except "Nightglass" removes most of the masochism from the equation).
Ugh! How horrible! Yet, it was still better than reading Ray Bradbury's "R is for Rocket." But I digress.
Like bicycling up a hillside, after lots of agony, the book eventually starts to let up and things get less unpleasant and more interesting. The challenge is to get to that plateau.
The novel is ultimately a story of character development and a quest for redemption in a world full of painful choices. Our protagonist is a boy with magical talent; he is tested for this, he tries to deliberately fail, but his deception is revealed and he is whisked away to a sadistic boarding school for spell-casters, where he makes friends with other kids who get magical training beaten, lacerated, and punctured into them.
You may recall I mentioned 'a dark, alien deity from another dimension' above. This other dimension is known as the Plane of Shadow, and it's something of a twisted version of the 'real world' of Golarion, populated by ghostly beings who have no real lives of their own and hunger for human emotions and/or physical sensations; and if joy isn't available, they are delighted to induce pain and misery as substitutes.
Similarly, this magical boarding school part of the novel is a twisted version of Harry Potter's time in Hogwarts school: our protagonist is whisked from a comfortable home life to an institution of gruesome horror; one where Ron Weasley casts spells at the cost of his own flesh (every time he casts a spell, a little piece of his body dies and starts to rot away); one where Hermione Granger has a brother who can't keep up with the lessons and the brother is irrevocably possessed by (consumed by? zombified by? sacrificed to?) a ghostly Shadow being, causing her in turn to be consumed with vengeance against the teachers who run the school; and like Harry Potter, our protagonist is tremendously gifted.
Later on, the story mirrors relations between the Native Americans and European conquerors; stone-age natives are living on barren land with a valuable mineral deposit, and a much more technologically sophisticated empire wants that silver. It's a story that has played out over and over again, but is retold here with swords and magic.
In the final analysis, the story becomes a fascinating exploration of how to preserve one's soul despite a lifetime of painful choices. It's also an examination of morality in a world without moral absolutes; in short, what choice can one make when every option causes misery to someone? Our protagonist is no hero; he clings to a sham of morality because he is disgusted by what he does, and the only thing saving him is the fact that he is surrounded by people who are even more horrible.
I have said a small number of kind words about this novel, but there are lots of good reasons to not read this novel. I don't like sadomasochistic material: I think that day-to-day life contains plenty of pain and misery to go around. I would recommend this novel to almost nobody I know. If you find the torture and mutilation in this novel to be entertaining, please seek help from mental health professionals. Please take this review as a warning I never got, and one the cover blurb should have provided.
I confess that I am not an impartial judge, because I already like the "Pathfinder" FRPG. If you can't stand the trappings of "Dungeons & Dragons," you probably won't like this novel; the novel features swords, fantastic humanoid races, wizards, and monsters. If you can get past that hurdle, there is another hurdle: the first 100-odd pages describe oppressive life in an evil kingdom beholden to a dark, alien deity from another dimension. If that isn't unappealing enough, this kingdom's ritual torture and disfigurement is graphically described through several chapters; this was the big hurdle for me, and the inspiration for my review's title (a reference to the popular sadomasochistic romance novel "Fifty Shades of Grey," except "Nightglass" removes most of the masochism from the equation).
Ugh! How horrible! Yet, it was still better than reading Ray Bradbury's "R is for Rocket." But I digress.
Like bicycling up a hillside, after lots of agony, the book eventually starts to let up and things get less unpleasant and more interesting. The challenge is to get to that plateau.
The novel is ultimately a story of character development and a quest for redemption in a world full of painful choices. Our protagonist is a boy with magical talent; he is tested for this, he tries to deliberately fail, but his deception is revealed and he is whisked away to a sadistic boarding school for spell-casters, where he makes friends with other kids who get magical training beaten, lacerated, and punctured into them.
You may recall I mentioned 'a dark, alien deity from another dimension' above. This other dimension is known as the Plane of Shadow, and it's something of a twisted version of the 'real world' of Golarion, populated by ghostly beings who have no real lives of their own and hunger for human emotions and/or physical sensations; and if joy isn't available, they are delighted to induce pain and misery as substitutes.
Similarly, this magical boarding school part of the novel is a twisted version of Harry Potter's time in Hogwarts school: our protagonist is whisked from a comfortable home life to an institution of gruesome horror; one where Ron Weasley casts spells at the cost of his own flesh (every time he casts a spell, a little piece of his body dies and starts to rot away); one where Hermione Granger has a brother who can't keep up with the lessons and the brother is irrevocably possessed by (consumed by? zombified by? sacrificed to?) a ghostly Shadow being, causing her in turn to be consumed with vengeance against the teachers who run the school; and like Harry Potter, our protagonist is tremendously gifted.
Later on, the story mirrors relations between the Native Americans and European conquerors; stone-age natives are living on barren land with a valuable mineral deposit, and a much more technologically sophisticated empire wants that silver. It's a story that has played out over and over again, but is retold here with swords and magic.
In the final analysis, the story becomes a fascinating exploration of how to preserve one's soul despite a lifetime of painful choices. It's also an examination of morality in a world without moral absolutes; in short, what choice can one make when every option causes misery to someone? Our protagonist is no hero; he clings to a sham of morality because he is disgusted by what he does, and the only thing saving him is the fact that he is surrounded by people who are even more horrible.
I have said a small number of kind words about this novel, but there are lots of good reasons to not read this novel. I don't like sadomasochistic material: I think that day-to-day life contains plenty of pain and misery to go around. I would recommend this novel to almost nobody I know. If you find the torture and mutilation in this novel to be entertaining, please seek help from mental health professionals. Please take this review as a warning I never got, and one the cover blurb should have provided.
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Criticism of the Death of Bin Laden
When President Obama reported that elite US soldiers killed the notorious terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden, most Americans breathed a sigh of relief: America's biggest bogey man was now laid to rest. Finally, we can get on with our lives.
Numerous right-wing pundits leaped on this news with 2 different schools of opinion:
One school argued that the death of Osama Bin Laden was a good thing, but it was really a victory for the previous president, George W. Bush; after all, Bush established an anti-Osama Bin Laden group, and numerous "enhanced interrogation" protocols which (perhaps literally) squeezed the necessary intelligence from enemy combatants. This school is wrong on multiple counts: Bush disbanded the anti-Bin Laden group, and the anti-Bin Laden intelligence did not come from "enhanced interrogation."
The other school argued that the death of Osama Bin Laden was a bad thing. They argued that Bin Laden should have been brought in for questioning, charged with his crimes as appropriate, then prosecuted in a court of law. Surely those soldiers who raided Osama Bin Laden's secret compound should be tried for gross incompetence in this killing, and Barack Obama should be held accountable.
I want to examine this second school for a moment.
In a more perfect world, this might have been the right way to deal with Bin Laden. In fact, I argued that in 2001 our first step should have been to approach the Afghan government with charges against Osama Bin Laden, and demand extradition to the US. Afghanistan was under control of the Taliban, and there are lots of reasons to despise the Taliban, but the US government had a functioning relationship with them, and the US was giving them loads of our tax dollars in foreign aid to assist in their efforts to eradicate Afghanistan's opium production and exportation; it turns out that the repressive religious zealots running the Taliban don't like it when people get high, just like the repressive religious zealots here don't like it when people get high. Afghanistan might have responded positively to the opportunity to maintain the relationship, and the implicit threat that if they do not yeild Osama Bin Laden, that things would get very bad for them.
However, George W. Bush only barely attempted this approach, and never presented the Taliban with evidence against Bin Laden, who was a local hero for helping expel the Soviets. Instead, Dubya sent in the military, which invaded and conquered Afghan's organized military in short order. Afghanistan was effectively destroyed, leaving the US with a monumental restoration project, and a lot of Afghanistanis are still angry about America's presence there. A lot of people continue to die on both sides as a result. We supposedly invaded in order to capture Bin Laden, but we never did find him there.
Of course, they say you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. But what if you drop the eggs on the floor, and you need to mop them up, and nobody gets any omelette? Everybody loses! Doesn't that mean the whole operation was a colossal screw-up?
Periodically, the Bush administration would proudly report that they had killed Osama Bin Laden's second-in-command. This was universally greeted with warm fanfare; proof that we were making progress. Certainly nobody complained that the second-in-command didn't get a fair trial, even if he never got the chance to surrender before he got blown up by US ordnance. In fact, entire wedding parties were massacred, but the right-wing press never peeped that the military should have done anything differently.
But now many right wingers complain that Osama Bin Laden should have been brought in alive. Why?
Many Barack Obama supporters argue that this is proof of either partisanship ('right wingers complain about President Obama because Obama is a Democrat'), or racism ('right wingers complain about President Obama because Obama is partly of African descent'). But these Barack Obama supporters are forgetting something:
Osama Bin Laden was wealthy. Bin Laden was heir to the Bin Laden oil fortune. And right wingers believe that wealthy people deserve preferential treatment; even if Bin Laden would be found guilty of mass murder, he should serve his sentence in some kind of 'Country Club' prison for wealthy embezzlers, or his sentence should be reduced to 'Community Service' or something, where he lectures teens not to turn to terrorism. Certainly a man as wealthy as Bin Laden shouldn't be shot dead like a rabid dog or a peasant.
Sure, you can kill lots of Number Twos without anyone raising an eyebrow; because they're just the help. You can wipe out entire cities, because they're all worthless poor people. But a black man killing a rich man? It simply isn't done! Imagine Thurston Howell in his palatial mansion, upon reading the news in the Wall Street Journal: "That ruffian Obama executed Bin Laden for killing three thousand people, but my chemical holdings poison millions every year! Good heavens, what's Obama planning to do to ME?"
Numerous right-wing pundits leaped on this news with 2 different schools of opinion:
One school argued that the death of Osama Bin Laden was a good thing, but it was really a victory for the previous president, George W. Bush; after all, Bush established an anti-Osama Bin Laden group, and numerous "enhanced interrogation" protocols which (perhaps literally) squeezed the necessary intelligence from enemy combatants. This school is wrong on multiple counts: Bush disbanded the anti-Bin Laden group, and the anti-Bin Laden intelligence did not come from "enhanced interrogation."
The other school argued that the death of Osama Bin Laden was a bad thing. They argued that Bin Laden should have been brought in for questioning, charged with his crimes as appropriate, then prosecuted in a court of law. Surely those soldiers who raided Osama Bin Laden's secret compound should be tried for gross incompetence in this killing, and Barack Obama should be held accountable.
I want to examine this second school for a moment.
In a more perfect world, this might have been the right way to deal with Bin Laden. In fact, I argued that in 2001 our first step should have been to approach the Afghan government with charges against Osama Bin Laden, and demand extradition to the US. Afghanistan was under control of the Taliban, and there are lots of reasons to despise the Taliban, but the US government had a functioning relationship with them, and the US was giving them loads of our tax dollars in foreign aid to assist in their efforts to eradicate Afghanistan's opium production and exportation; it turns out that the repressive religious zealots running the Taliban don't like it when people get high, just like the repressive religious zealots here don't like it when people get high. Afghanistan might have responded positively to the opportunity to maintain the relationship, and the implicit threat that if they do not yeild Osama Bin Laden, that things would get very bad for them.
However, George W. Bush only barely attempted this approach, and never presented the Taliban with evidence against Bin Laden, who was a local hero for helping expel the Soviets. Instead, Dubya sent in the military, which invaded and conquered Afghan's organized military in short order. Afghanistan was effectively destroyed, leaving the US with a monumental restoration project, and a lot of Afghanistanis are still angry about America's presence there. A lot of people continue to die on both sides as a result. We supposedly invaded in order to capture Bin Laden, but we never did find him there.
Of course, they say you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. But what if you drop the eggs on the floor, and you need to mop them up, and nobody gets any omelette? Everybody loses! Doesn't that mean the whole operation was a colossal screw-up?
Periodically, the Bush administration would proudly report that they had killed Osama Bin Laden's second-in-command. This was universally greeted with warm fanfare; proof that we were making progress. Certainly nobody complained that the second-in-command didn't get a fair trial, even if he never got the chance to surrender before he got blown up by US ordnance. In fact, entire wedding parties were massacred, but the right-wing press never peeped that the military should have done anything differently.
But now many right wingers complain that Osama Bin Laden should have been brought in alive. Why?
Many Barack Obama supporters argue that this is proof of either partisanship ('right wingers complain about President Obama because Obama is a Democrat'), or racism ('right wingers complain about President Obama because Obama is partly of African descent'). But these Barack Obama supporters are forgetting something:
Osama Bin Laden was wealthy. Bin Laden was heir to the Bin Laden oil fortune. And right wingers believe that wealthy people deserve preferential treatment; even if Bin Laden would be found guilty of mass murder, he should serve his sentence in some kind of 'Country Club' prison for wealthy embezzlers, or his sentence should be reduced to 'Community Service' or something, where he lectures teens not to turn to terrorism. Certainly a man as wealthy as Bin Laden shouldn't be shot dead like a rabid dog or a peasant.
Sure, you can kill lots of Number Twos without anyone raising an eyebrow; because they're just the help. You can wipe out entire cities, because they're all worthless poor people. But a black man killing a rich man? It simply isn't done! Imagine Thurston Howell in his palatial mansion, upon reading the news in the Wall Street Journal: "That ruffian Obama executed Bin Laden for killing three thousand people, but my chemical holdings poison millions every year! Good heavens, what's Obama planning to do to ME?"
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