ManicDDaily

I spoke to my mother in Florida today, May 5th, who asked me if we were all super-happy now, we New Yorkers.  (My mom watches a lot of TV.)

New Yorkers are never super happy.  (We don’t all wear black just because it doesn’t show dirt.)

But some of us do seem to be happier than usual; according to the media, many of us are absolutely euphoric about the killing of bin Laden; for the last few days I’ve been wondering why I’m not one of this group.

(Please don’t misunderstand me. I am glad the U.S. has accomplished its mission.  Still, I don’t find that bin Laden’s death brings the satisfaction that the media has been touting.)

One reason, previously mentioned, is a general pacifism.  I could manage violence in self-defense, and certainly in defense of others, but I feel uncomfortable with an “eye for an eye” ideal of justice, even in the case of horrific villains.  It seems to me that one must be careful not to lower one’s self to activities that are in any way similar to those that one deplores.

But one reason for my sense of anti-climax may be the way the 9/11 attack was originally handled.  At the start, President Bush characterized the attack as an act of war rather than as a crime.  (I remember that moment in his speech with great intensity, sitting on my coach, in the haze of smoke and dust that overtook downtown Manhattan, weeping.  Afterwards, cooking impossible, we went to eat in an Indian restaurant I’d never been to before or since.   Like many Indian restaurants in New York, it was actually a Bangladeshi restaurant, and I wondered what the waiters were thinking, serving those small metal dishes of currified sauces, war in Asia in the making.  It was a surreal time in the City.)

If an action is characterized as an act of war, if it is used as the justification for war (two wars), it’s a bit difficult to turn it back into a crime again, something solved by a successful manhunt.

Would that it could be so.