For whom the Bell tolls in the Kingdom of Fear:

For whom the Bell tolls in the Kingdom of Fear:

And the big question of "What, or who, is next?"

I was standing in my kitchen when I heard the news, talking on the phone. I remember blinking in confusion, exchanging a few words with the female voice on the other end of the line, and heading outside for a cigarette. Osama Bin Laden was dead. I didn't, rightly, know how to process this kind of thing and my mind was already racing with some, very loud, thoughts. Among said thoughts was that, after ten years of work, we finally toppled the Monster that's been keeping us up at night. I remember saying something to the effect of "Well, that was odd" -- but this had nothing to do with the occasion at hand. I could only hope that now, after all these years, the stranglehold on this Kingdom of fear might relax and give us all, much needed, breath of fresh air.

I took some time to mull the whole thing over before begging to trudge through the flurry of news headlines on the matter. The headline of The Los Angeles Times reads: "Obama announces Osama bin Laden killed by U.S." Of course it did. It was everywhere and it was the news we'd all been waiting to hear for over a decade. I still wasn't sure what to think of it. He'd managed to evade U.S. forces for so long. I swallowed the thick knot of discontent in my throat and found myself thinking 'Maybe if we'd been looking for him in Pakistan instead of Iraq..', but I couldn't let that kind of thing linger for too long. It would just make the whole thing seem all the more weird.This whole thing was enough to drive me into a dizzy, foaming, mess and I knew I'd need some kind of oxygen if I was going to make it thought this the strange night ahead of me so I did what most Americans were doing -- I made a drink.

May 1st, 2011. It was the 58th anniversary of the day the first American, James Whittaker, had climbed Mount Everest, the day we announced Hitler had died, and, of course, it was Law Day. Now we could add the dead of bin Laden to that list of historical accomplishments that we'd made on this day in our time. I wasn't immune to the universal irony that came with these facts -- after all it's a big deal when you can claim to vanquish two of the greatest threats to freedom in the world on the same day. The American Bar association says "Law Day underscores how law and the legal process have contributed to the freedoms that all Americans share." The whole thing struck a raw and festering chord within me. Wasn't that what the news had been calling the toppling of a Government, the high cost of bodies we used to pay for it and all that was being, in the wrong country nevertheless, done? Hadn't we been hearing, all along, how this was the true enemy of Freedom in the world? I couldn't help but wonder "What now?"

I decided to reflect on the last ten years. We all knew, right from the moment the planes had come crashing into the Towers in New York City, that we'd have to punish someone. Old friends and allies alike would have to be scrutinized and no one was safe from the burning eye we'd now lit in the land. Everyone was a suspect in the Kingdom of Fear and Osama bin Laden was the biggest boogeyman of all. He was the puppet master behind everything that went bump in the night, the man behind the curtain, and we had only one, surefire, solution in terms of him and anyone who might have been anything like him: Violence.

It had been the same for Japanese Americans living here after the attack on Pearl Harbor. None were to be welcomed, none were to be forgiven, and none shown sympathy. Even after we dropped the big bombs, justice still wasn't done; even almost seventy years later, when the tsunami tore through the country, the cry was 'REVENGE!'. In 2001, it was every American of, middle eastern decent that became a target for the hate and rage of well meaning patriots and lovers of America. It was a savage time, and, of course, something had to be done about it. We couldn't stand this kind of pressure for too long and the Bush administration, for all their infinite wisdom, decided it was the time to act. 

The very notion that Osama bin Laden was the antithesis of 'All things American' had never sat well with me and neither did the 'War on Terrorism' that followed. It was a war that had been fought, and perpetrated on all fronts. We were bought and sold fear at home, told to shoot at it overseas, and the news had been littered with tiny reports of victories in and far off countries. Americans love war on television though; there's nothing like big missiles and the explosions of building by night vision to remind you that, at the end of the day, your freedom is being defended and your oil prices are being secured. It, like all wars, had would have the most dire of consequences, but that didn't matter. "Never mind the cost!" had become the mantra, "The vicious dogs must die!" 

Freedoms and securities are always the first things to drop after this kind of thing. Every dissonant voice on the telephone was suspect, every immigrant harbored a hidden agenda for violence, and every drug dealer was knowingly buying their supply from Al Queda dealers. We'd all become suspects of terrorism, none of us could be trusted, and we were all told it was time to get in line for the firing squad. None were to be given quarter, none were to be spared, and the ignorant minutemen were set loose with all the bricks and bombs they'd need to remind those fear mongers that their drug would never be welcome here -- even if everyone was swallowing it down with their meat and potatoes.

It didn't get any better from there either. From the derail to Iraq from Afghanistan and the endless, sandbox, quest for Weapons of Mass Destruction. We send all the good, red, white and blue, boys overseas with shovels to look for bombs; and when we didn't find them? Well, that just wasn't good enough. The great beast of war was fed only on victories, and if there were no bombs to blow up, we'd have to settle for something all new. Like Father like Son, it was Gulf War 2.0 and we were all willing to buy into the frenzy, feeding our love for war with the need for crude resources and the blood pumping race that could only come from an honest to goodness public hanging. Anything to take the focus off all this nonsense about torture and water boarding back home. We're Americans, god damn it, we're the good guys. We do no wrong, we never oppress, we never misjudge, and we're the bastions of all light and purity in the comedy world.

It was just this kind of thinking we continued to swallow, content to sweep any negative headline under the rug of victory and success in the middle east, if not the election of a new president -- there's nothing like having a landmark moment at home to take the focus off what's happening on the other side of the world -- and things things were quiet, for a time. The war frenzy had faded into a dull and listless sea of angry people. We'd finally caught on to the winds of garbage that had been blowing back across the ocean, but we had bigger problems now. Collapsing economies, banks that needed bailouts, skyrocketing unemployment rates, and the most dreaded and vicious best of all, recession.

These had become the new backlash effects of "Terrorism". We'd all been blindly fucked into stupidity. Those of us who hadn't taken up torches and pitchforks for the cause were just as guilty as those who'd fly planes into buildings. As more and more of us became discontent with the news on the screen, more and more had gone into hiding. We'd pulled the blankets over our own eyes and simply held our breath like children, hoping to scare away the boogeyman just this once. We sat inside and masturbated to commercials for cheeseburgers and steak, bought larger televisions, celebrated all the great things that made us American from the safety of our homes, and let everything go to pieces all around us.

For ten years we've been caught in the vice grip. Our passports have been denied and we've been trapped behind enemy lines in, what has been sometimes called, The Kingdom of Fear. We'd done little for ourselves, and it was just this kind of inaction that had turned us away from anything that might have been productive for any of us as a whole. Gas was too expensive, the world was full of terrorists, and nobody had any answers that could help with safety -- so, we did what had to be done. We started looking under every rock, in every cave and, finally, in every palace until we found the boogeyman. We put one in his brain, demanded the body, and ran off back home to tell everyone the good news; It's safe to go outside again.

What concerns me most about this whole thing is that we've all been taking the fear pill for quite awhile now, an I'm pretty sure most everyone -- and everything -- is addicted. Fear is good for America in a corporate sense, never mind the Military and political front. There are few things more motivating to people in this world than fear and war and it's, surprisingly easy, to combine the two and make yourself look good for a headline. I have no doubt that Osama bin Laden will be the next Elvis. We'll be seeing him everywhere across the country in the next twenty five years. He might put on weight or change the style of his lungee, and trim his beard, but tabloids will, never the less, be littered blurry snapshots of him taken on gas station security cameras.

Of course this is all only until a new Monster can be found, lurking somewhere out in the world. Until then we'll all be pacified by modern sitcoms and bad celebrity news, hovering about like a gangrenous mass of junkies waiting for the next, big, fear to come dropping out of the sky. It's conditioning, it's training and so, the question of us many of us are standing up to ask is: "... who will they train you all to fear now?" The bell may have tolled in the Kingdom of Fear and the dragon may be dead, but the Kings, Queens, Counts, Dukes, Lords, and Ladies of the lands aren't as foolish as we'd all like to think. I'd say "Don't Worry" -- but that really seems pointless until the withdrawals wear off. 

Until then we're all encouraged to drink whiskey, light fires, dance naked, and revel in our "victory". The votes have been counted, the scores have been tallied, and all the tapes have been reviewed. This game is over and we've won, earning us the right to celebrate the death of our "enemy" in these dark and twisted hours. Just remember -- figureheads come and go. We lock them under house arrest, drop bombs in their living rooms, and sometimes, just sometimes, you find them already dead and buried. That doesn't mean anything though, people won't believe it until they're gone and we've all been given the chance to line up and gnaw on their bones. 

They could be out there, anywhere in the world, just waiting to be reinvented -- I just wish we could have killed the fear, once and for all. Then, finally, maybe we'd have something to celebrate.