enthalpy

Tuesday, May 03, 2011


Now that we've had a few days to settle down about the killing of Bin Laden, I think it's apt to trot out a great essay from George Orwell and his take on revenge. I love his angle here about the perception of the oppressed as he becomes the oppressor:
I concluded that he wasn't really enjoying it, and that he was merely--like a man in a brothel, or a boy smoking his first cigar, or a tourist traipsing round a picture gallery--TELLING himself that he was enjoying it, and behaving as he had planned to behave in the days he was helpless.
How perfect. "I know I'm supposed to enjoy this. . so why don't I?" I don't think the world was a better place with OBL in it, but his demise gives us very little to celebrate. In short, he won, and he was looking for this bullet for the last 15 years. The "war on terror" isn't any closer to being over, we're not any safer, and the draconian law that were enacted because of him will never, ever go away. So celebrate the revenge, morons, and think real hard about the times when you used to be able to get on an airplane without getting felt up.

Here's an amusing send up of a past not likely to return:




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