The Post-Osama United States

Obama and crew waiting for the raid to take place. Image source.

Many Americans feted the execution of Osama this week. They gathered at the White House, at Ground Zero, in parks and bars; they hosted events, called radio shows, wrote letters to the editors of their local papers. There were others who didn't feel so gung-ho on the whole thing, and questioned whether it was ok to feel happy or excited about killing someone. Sure, he deserved it. No one questioned that. But, proving that America does still have some pragmatic morality left in her heart, there were some who took pause.

One thing that's really struck me personally is the passage of time. It's hard to believe it's been ten years since everything changed. Can you remember the spring of 2000? Everyone was ecstatic that Y2K was a huge hoax - planes could land, the stock market wouldn't crash and the federal budget was balanced. Shangri-La-di-da.

Amidst the ease and safety of the age, the world was far from perfect, but it wasn't apocalyptic if you were an 8 year old. At least one of your parents was employed, more than likely, the house wasn't getting foreclosed on, polar bears weren't dying, there weren't multiple wars being fought abroad, and schools weren't having funding and programs cut by anorexic state budgets. To these 8 year olds, the fall of 2001 would shatter their young worlds.

What set off that firework in my brain was when I heard a college kid being interviewed by NPR say that "a specter" which has loomed over his formative years - the conventional wisdom's face for terrorism, Osama bin Laden - had been lifted. It really dawned on me how completely different an experience it would have been for a young kid - these kids who had aged 10 years and were now in college. (They grow up so fast, don't they?) These were the kids who were outside the White House (including several cheerleaders who got a lot of camera time from MSNBC's live feed), whether they were ecstatic, or introspective, or in-between.

I suspect (and this is the point that set me off on this bit of ranting) that a lot of people who are happy feel that way because it's the first thing that the government has actually done in the win column in a decade. This a period that should be remembered for the complete and utter dissatisfaction of people toward a government that is supposed to work for them, rather than against them (see the Tea Party, or senselessly broad shifts of allegiance among independent voters searching for a candidate to represent their interests as evidence to this point).

You can argue that the administration passed healthcare reform (for better, or worse) as an accomplishment. And yes, it did pass, but it passed in a such a watered down manner that really no one was happy with it. Yes, it will do some good things for some people, but it will also make life a lot more difficult for others without solving A LOT of the real problems (shrinking of available primary care facilities other than hospital emergency rooms in many communities, exponential growth of the pharmaceutical industry, etc.) So, while it passed, it left the country more divided than it was before, so it's a net fail.

The bailout and stimulus - that could have done a lot of good if it had been invested wisely into a comprehensive mix of infrastructure, culture, education and technology development, but it was swallowed by Wall Street - a smarmy bunch of wealthy douchebags who vote Republican for the tax breaks and complain that people should pull themselves up by their bootstraps rather than accept government assistance - who had the audacity to pilfer the biggest handout in history in order to line the pockets of shareholders and executives.

Even during the Bush era, what did we get? Two wars, tax breaks that didn't affect anyone I knew in a meaningful way, an increase in the federal bureaucracy attached to public education funding (NCLB), and a bunch of calls to support our troops (while the government was using defense budgets to pay private contractors 3-4x what they were paying US armed forces, failed to maintain good post-war care [including Walter Reed] for soldiers, etc).

Not only that, but they couldn't even catch one bearded guy, who was partially trained and funded by the US government in the 1980s when we needed his help screwing the Russians in Afghanistan.

Until the government finally did catch and kill him.

The picture above has gone viral in the last 24 hours, and part of that is because it's a reminder to a lot of people who had lost hope in the government all together that there are still some high powered, super secret, clenched butt cheek meetings and some measurable outcomes that result from them. The government does actually do stuff, they just haven't been able to lately. Maybe remembering how to win will be the start of something positive.