Herman 191

I realize this is very delayed. Oh well.

Well… he’s dead.

I hardly ever write blog posts that involve current news or political affairs. I mean, there’s a few exceptions, but I generally avoid those topics because I don’t want to politicize my blog. This is a place for me to unwind and just let myself have some fun, with the hope that some of you might also enjoy what I’ve come up with, too. Writing about divisive and contentious issues is not my way of accomplishing that goal.

But I think that the news today on May 1 (I’m starting to write this at 11:40 PM) deserves a post, even if it doesn’t involve anything really interesting. Back on September 11 of last year, I wrote a post about where I was when the massive terrorist attacks occurred in New York and Washington, DC. I was in the eighth grade, watching the TV with wide eyes, seeing what was easily the most mortifying and surreal spectacle that my 13-year-old brain had dealt with thus far. I distinctly remember one of my teachers, Mrs. Falcone, printing something off the internet and showing it to us. It was a copy of a webpage entitled “Osama bin Laden,” with his mugshot prominently on top. I both simultaneously did and didn’t realize that his name would stick around for a while. A long while.

Osama bin Laden back in October 2001.

My memory’s a bit hazy, but I feel like people talked about Osama bin Laden as if he were already a dead man. The hunt for Osama bin Laden didn’t seem like a gigantic undertaking–they would just go in there and get him after a little while. I’m not sure many people thought that it would be near the 10th anniversary of the attack that that goal would actually be realized.

For ten years, Osama bin Laden’s face would trigger the most primal responses out of people. A sad fraction of US citizens might not be able to point out the US on a map, but most anyone would recognize bin Laden’s face each time he released a new grainy video in which he was walking around in front of caves or speaking in front of a rickety wall, mentioning contemporary news items to prove that these videos weren’t prerecorded. We were constantly reminded that he was alive and well and that we weren’t able to find “a six-foot-five Arab man on dialysis” (as Robin Williams noted back in 2002). Each new appearance was just a brazen tease.

It’s over now. For my own personal record, I’m going to explain where I was when I found out about this.

I was actually watching a Korean TV show with my parents. At 9:40 PM or so, the show finished, and I went downstairs to this computer. Without looking at Facebook or the news, I started working on a blog post–a Herman comic, actually. Right as I started, I looked at my chat program and saw that one of my friends, Jessica, was online. She wasn’t typically online that often, but she’d been on consistently for the last three days. I was surprised.

“Can you believe it?” she first messaged me. I thought she was referring to how she’d been on Google Talk for the last three days, so I joked, “Did you break both your legs or something?” Just a fraction of a second before my message to her was sent, I got another message from her.

“Have you seen the news?”

I hadn’t. I went to the New York Times website and was shocked to see the headline in huge, bold, capital letters: BIN LADEN IS DEAD. I got chills. First, I was hit with a wave of incredulity. I couldn’t help but go “…WHAT?” in my mind. I started frantically opening up more tabs to verify this insane headline on other sites, all while turning on my TV to the news. NBC News came up first as I flipped channels. It was all true. Osama bin Laden was dead. Anchors, talking heads, and people who’d lost family members to 9/11 flooded the channel with their feelings, reactions, and insight into the whole ordeal and its greater implications. After about an hour’s worth of delays, President Obama finally walked up to his podium in the East Wing and made it official. I was entranced.

After watching his speech, I juggled myself between watching the news and keeping up with the flurry of updates on Facebook, even contributing a couple of my own (including a Herman strip that I spontaneously made). And then I was led here. What a trip, and what a night.

It’s still really surreal. It’s like that proverbial dog chasing after the car–and then eventually catching one. For what is nearly half of my life (and a large fraction of the life that I can remember), Osama bin Laden has been linked with the new generation of terrorism and so much weight behind huge changes in US foreign policy. We are currently in two large-scale wars due to the thoughts and actions of this ringleader. The lives of thousands of families, along with our history, approach to security, stature on the global stage, and political dialogue have been wholly transformed because of him and what he represents. Now there’s a bullet in his head. Isn’t that crazy?

A snapshot of the New York Times website in the early hours of May 2, about 3.5 hours after the news first broke.

This post was more a ramble than a coherent post, but I couldn’t help but do it. The occasion was too big and I couldn’t restrain myself. After all, what reason is there for me to restrain myself? It’s a huge deal and it’s my blog.

We’re all going to find out how this news is going to affect us on both the national and international levels. None of us can predict how the political climate in the US will change, or how people will most likely use this to advance their own political stature or put others down. Despite what anyone on the news says, we don’t know whether bin Laden’s death will really deflate terrorist organizations or make them try to lash back even harder.

But I don’t think that we should worry about that stuff so soon. After almost 10 years of being plagued by Osama bin Laden and his elusiveness and evil, I think we can spend at least one day finding some solace and/or satisfaction in his being gone. We can also take this time to remember the people lost on 9/11/01 and recognize the sacrifices and hard work put forth by the thousands of public servants and armed forces since then and inevitably into the future. And not least of all, we can be grateful for being citizens of the United States of America. Sometimes, it might seem like an insane place filled with nothing but excesses, disagreements, and superficiality, but we should step back and be thankful that we live in a country where we are free to partake in such insanity. (As hard as it is for me to say, we should be happy that we live in a place where Donald Trump fancies himself a viable presidential candidate–at least it gave President Obama and Seth Meyers plenty of ammunition for their routines at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last night. (Speaking of which, President Obama has had two incredible days in a row.))

I know it sounds terrible to revel in someone’s death, but I think certain people make it easy for themselves. This is one of those cases.

What an incoherent mess I just wrote. Sorry. But really, I think I deserve a pass for the day.