A year in review

It's been a year since I began this blog. Coming in at 53 posts, one per week fairly regularly. This is pretty cool, in my humble opinion.

But, that doesn't matter. The big news is that Bin Laden is dead. The way I sort of think about it, in comic book terms at least, is that he's kind of our nations supervillain. He was the head of a group that murders innocents in grandiose ways to make points. In short, he's like a fundie Joker or something.

But the there's a couple of things about this event that make me think. The first, of course, is the justification for killing him. The second is what happens after.

I mean, the guy did deserve to die. He was the dickiest dick to dick our generation, but does it make us right to kill him? Does it matter that we kill a killer? I mean, I'm glad the guy's dead but I wish we had captured him or something, but at the same time I mean that would have just been such a process, and it's not really like we need a trial when the guy's already confessed and we've proven the case. It'd be a sham, and not at all a truly fair trial, and it would just corrupt the event by dragging it out. This is cultural closure, and it's okay to be happy. I just find myself thinking about what Superman would do.

I know it's stupid, but 9/11 was such a huge thing, so super-villainy that you just wanted Superhero to fly in and save the day. But that didn't happen, of course. It didn't stop us from wanting it though. And now that we've gotten him, I keep wondering about Superman again. What would he do?

He never kills, despite who he's staring down. He would have grabbed Osama and drop in on the Senate floor or in a cell in the Hague. I don't know. But then again, Superman isn't real, and so Black Ops did the job they do best.

So what happens now? Supervillains have a tendency to come back. Osama won't get resurrected, but there will be someone to take his place. But, we'll handle it. Its what we have to do.