It's been just over 84 hours since I first heard about Osama Bin Laden's dispatch at the hands of American Navy SEALs in Pakistan. I am embarrassed to admit that I learned about it from FaceBook, while taking the dog out for a walk, after putting the girls to bed. I wasn't watching Celebrity Apprentice to see the news stations break in to announce an important message from the president. I didn't have the opportunity to surmise that he was going to come on to announce an alien attack, or nukes headed our way, or to just gloat at his ability to be able to break into the broadcast of Trump's show. I learned it through reading posts on my news stream from Facebook friends.
The boys were still awake after I got back from my walk, and there was some homework emergency that needed immediate attention. I mentioned to Karen about the news I read, and she looked mildly interested; but, mostly, she looked like she really wanted all of her children to finally be in bed.
It wasn't until late Sunday night that I was able to check the news sites on my computer, and it seemed as if what my Facebook friends were posting was the latest: The President broke into Celebrity Apprentice (and ALL the other television shows on at that time slot) to announce that Osama Bin Laden had been killed by U.S. military forces, and very soon after the announcement was made, people streamed into the streets of New York and other cities chanting, "USA! USA! USA!" I fell asleep wrestling with how I felt about that.
That morning, I'd watched footage of Obama roasting Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents' Dinner and guffawed over my Sunday Tribune, opened to Steve Chapman's and Clarence Page's attempts to break down the psychology of The Birthers.
Of the Birther phenomenon, Chapman writes:
Page postulated on the further attempts Trump will take to besmirch Obama's character, "... saying what many others would like to say if they only had his bully pulpit, even when he uses it for real bullying."Birthers don't dislike Obama because they think he was born abroad. They think he was born abroad because they dislike him. People of this bent don't proceed from facts to a conclusion. They prefer to reach a conclusion and then scrounge for any facts - or "facts" - that support it. For them, being told Obama is a natural-born American is like being told he's a loving father and a loyal friend. They wont' buy it because it doesn't confirm what they want to be true.
The phenomenon, of course, is not limited to conservatives or Republicans. It's endemic to partisans and ideologues of every stripe. In a 1988 survey, Democrats were far more likely than Republicans to believe that inflation and unemployment rose under President Ronald Reagan - though they had actually fallen.
In Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, he painted a very strong picture of GW Bush and his incompetence, which was strongly defended by many on the left, but parts of Moore's story were proven to be more propaganda and conjecture than originally believed. Moore created his film for a specific audience, who would echo his sentiments back to him and to their friends as well as into arguments and defense of a very particular point of view about 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
These two journalists and filmmaker touch on what Carl Rogers wrote about extensively in in 1961 in his book, On Becoming a Person. In the opening of part one, titled "Speaking Personally", Rogers writes "I speak as a person, from a context of personal experience and personal learnings."
I've had a number of conversations, spanning a great spectrum of opinion and experience, on Facebook with friends and relatives over the past three days. I posted the now-famous Situation Room picture, drawing some humorous musings on what the president and his staff could have been watching, and from these guesses, stirred up a scolding from another friend who deemed us in "poor taste". I expressed a negative reaction to someone posting a supposed picture of a dead Osama Bin Laden on her Facebook news stream (a picture that was later revealed to be doctored), stating that it was the first thing in the morning, and that my children are present. I was, again, scolded by someone else on that thread who justified her expertise as claiming herself ex-USMC, stating, "Kids see worse on video games." I was labeled anti-American for expressing concern at the tackiness of the chanting of USA! USA! in the nation's capital and in NY. Some have championed this a huge win for America; others as a huge win for Christianity. A few have come at it oppositely, questioning whether Osama Bin Laden actually had anything to do with the attacks on the WTC and The Pentagon, and the failed attempt on the White House and the Capital on September 11, 2001; questioning if killing this man is just a meaningless action to further a much larger, hidden agenda.
There have been the media attacks from all over the spectrum, too. The sound clips of George Bush, during his second term in office, basically stating that he had given up looking for Osama Bin Laden juxtaposed with Obama stating, during his campaign, that he would find Osama Bin Laden and kill him. There has been the criticism of Obama for going to NY today to lay a wreath at Ground Zero. There has been the ongoing argument of whether past presidents should be allowed to share in the responsibility of helping to take this man down, or whether they should be given sole credit, or none at all.
It went down very much like it was described it would go down by Bush's team, circa 2003. The military would rely on intelligence to find the exact whereabouts of the terrorist leader, a specially-trained, small team would penetrate the armor, go in and capture or dispatch the bad guy. Somehow, that description became blurred in the larger military initiative of moving into Iraq. There was money to be made, according to some detractors of the war in Iraq. What I do know was that this situation quickly became something that could no longer be described by the president or his staff. It seemed to be out of control.
And, then, we got Saddam Hussein - sent in special forces to extract him from his spider hole. Parts of Iraq rejoiced. Other parts vowed revenge. America breathed a collective sigh of relief. Something went our way, for a change. Hussein was tried and executed. We moved forward. Terror threats did not subside. Troops did not come home. Duct tape sales increased.
Personally, I believed at this time that Bush had surrounded himself with enough competent people (Cheney included. I thought that his soullessness might even be an advantage to running an offensive against religious fundamentalist terrorists) that he might be able to pull this thing off - that might be able to isolate the bad guys from the rest of the world's Muslim population - that might be able to achieve some objectives and get our troops home without losing the faith of the American people.
What I did not take into account though, was EVERYONE's context of personal experience, and how the media has played to these different contexts. It seems that, whatever news you might want to hear, there's a channel for it, there is someone speaking directly to you and what you believe, and where you come from. That, for whatever you do not want to believe, there is someone else who has said something to support that somewhere on TV, or the internet, or YouTube. It seems that everything has become the OpEd section of the high school newspaper. Big news networks have started running comments to blog posts as bits of news on the tickers below the broadcasts. Journalism in our nation has become the same pot of coffee run through the same machine five, six, seven times over... And, we're getting ready to pour it through the strainer again. Who's going to drink it, though, now? Nobody wants to. That much is obvious.
There are no photos of Bin Laden's dead body. There are very detailed accounts of what went down. There are contrasting stories as to what Bin Laden did seconds before getting a few bullets pumped into him. There are recycled opinions traveling at confounding speed all over the radio waves and television stations, emails and forum threads as to what should have been done, and what should happen, now that whatever has been done is done.
I do know this. When the troops start coming home, my smile will widen. When the terror threats subside, I will breathe easier.
Right now, I have more important things to worry about, like how to tie a ponytail into the hair of a girl who clearly would rather be riding a stuffed horse, or talking an eleven-year-old through a tough loss in a soccer game that most definitely should have been won, or determining what the best bedding is for the bottom of a gerbil cage.
