Ding Dong Osama's Dead, the Wicked Prince, the Wicked Prince

Half way through the depths of a lager, after a long night of work, I learned American troops slaughtered the Boogeyman, Osama Bin Laden, the first person in History to be in the eye of a technological global manhunt. My intense glare gratefully looked at the glistening beer before me, the only thing in that moment that seemed to matter.

"Obama just won re-election" Is the first thought that hit me.

I didn't rush home to gawk at the T.V. or excitedly ask the bartender to pour my nationalistic side a celebratory shot of whiskey. I already knew the images and words our media would submerge the public in. The moment seemed surreal through the scrolling words of a newsline beneath the Red Sox game, and I can honestly say I didn't care emotionally, no tears or smiles...I felt nothing. When I arrived home to force myself to the television, I was just in time to witness the empty soul of our modern fuhrer, President Obama, taking credit for the action, and delivering one of the most important speeches of our time with the same emotionless face that stretched across my guise. Obama's words, "The War on Terrorism is far from over" rattled through the cracks of my brain. To me this was stating the obvious, as the manhunt for Osama has deviated to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, instability in Egypt, Bahrain, and bombings in Libya, soon to see the soil of Syria. I saw a War on Terror become a dissolution of guaranteed rights like freedom of speech, press, and assembly, I saw the war turn home as American citizens are treated like terrorists every day, groped by the TSA and herded through the x-rays of advanced screenings.

Visions of brutal police pummeled unmarked vans filled with government agents and headphones, scrolling slowly through green neighborhoods. I saw WTO protestors in Pittsburgh maced, beaten, and deafened, as the quiet screams of a man plummeting from the upper levels of the World Trade Center plunged into gangs of depressed stockholders frantically selling off shares to compensate for loss. One thousand tickets in their hands transformed to political signs reading "Obama/Biden" as a wonder-struck fifteen year old walked into Geometry on a fateful day and saw America as he knew it die in a brisk September.

I watched in shock as thousands of whites in D.C. suddenly all appeared at once to celebrate, simultaneously with drunken puppets in Manhattan and Boston. Citizens cheered and ran with flags around the streets in a more "civilized" manner than the cavemen of Pakistan and Palestine who cheered the day the towers fell, overcome by their thirst for blood and joy in death. I reflected on the thousands of innocent men women and children who died on September 11th, the innocent casualties and children carpet bombed in Iraq, the American soldiers who gave their lives fighting a war that only seemed to grow over time without any clear objective. I thought about the onslaught of laws and regulations that came home, the general fear people began to have of their neighbors, and the cold stares of those in burkas who patiently waited to be flogged in the streets. The world will never be the same, Osama is dead, and so is our dream.

I question everything, especially when the "conservative" network FOX boasts the victory for Obama, and the body of our tormentor was immediately cast into the sea without thorough evaluation. The most important corpse in the world caused people to jubilantly cheer and scream without any contemplation of it's significance, and vanished into a watery abyss before speculation, in line with Islamic tradition, because in War, God knows, one must respect the fallen, even the body of a murderer, whom we raked the Earth for a decade to find. I believe the term is "catch and release". I always catch my biggest fish when I don't bring them home.

So relax America, the boogeyman is dead, though you forgot about him over the years, as the beginning of something more sinister festers inside our nation. Worship your leader, because his campaign is rolling and he needs your votes. Celebrate a man who was incapable of worldly expression as he walked into his defining moment. I saw the face of a man who expected the outcome, I saw the face of a man dancing in arrogant victory, who cared more about the delivery of his words than the significance of the day.

The sweeping War on Terror is in fact far from over, but now it needs a new face, and as others jubilantly dance like fools in the streets, I sit and wonder who the next boogeyman will be, and when he will strike. The lust for power inside the core of man has not dwindled, and now we have a man sitting on top of the world, with a feeling of invincibility, and a haunting stare that causes me to tremble.