Long Day: aka This is NOT the end of the movie

When I woke up this morning I decided that I would write all day. I knew I'd been feeling better because for the second day in a row I didn't have that creepy Sleep Paralysis thing (meaning, hopefully, that I am less stressed out). I feel my life is starting to improve, except for the fact that I can't wake up when my alarm goes off to save my life.

Anyway, my plan was to write all day today. That didn't work out. Surprise, surprise. I wrote a few hundred words and diddled around with Scrivener for a while before becoming distracted by the timesuck that is Twitter for the rest of the day.

Then, around 10:15pm I started getting tweets about an upcoming speech. What was going on? Due to the types of people I follow on Twitter (sci-fi geeks, etc.) there were many joke tweets about the end of the world, how there was a meteor hurtling towards Earth, or how we'd made alien contact. But it turned out to be far more important/significant than that: after 10+ years of searching, the US had finally captured and killed Osama bin Laden.

My reaction was typically how I react to anything and everything: That's cool. Now what?

President Obama gave a very beautiful speech (kudos to his speech writer). People gathered outside the White House and the WTC and waved flags while singing God Bless America. Even Phillies fans were chanting USA! USA! during the ninth inning of a tie game versus the Mets.

It felt nice that America could take part in a similar celebration that the Egyptians did when Mubarak stepped down.

But of course, it didn't last. I didn't mind the jokes about Osama bin Laden or even the Osama's Ghost and Osama in Hell Twitter accounts that popped up. Some of the jokes were funny. What bothered me was how quickly and inevitably it turned to Democrats versus Republicans. I found it disgusting how all of a sudden everything became "Obama finished what George W started" "George W couldn't find him but Obama could." In other words, everything became all finger-pointy. And, of course, FoxNews and CNN joined in on it.

But the tweet that inspired this post essentially said that all Muslims were responsible for what happened on 9/11 and how it was "our turn to dance" on the streets after Muslims celebrated our deaths. That kind of thinking is what pisses me off. To say that an entire demographic of people is responsible for an attack of that magnitude is socially irresponsible. To say that all Muslims are responsible for 9/11 is no different from the group of Islamic terrorists who say that all Americans are money-loving heathens who must be destroyed.

You cannot take a group of extremists who happen to be Muslim and then say that ALL Muslims are extremists who want us to die. The terrorists said the same thing and we know how wrong they are, right? So what makes a person think that they can tip the scale to the other side of the Prejudice Board and claim that they're in the right as well. It's extremist thinking and has no place in the world. Least of all my Twitter feed.

Alas, the death of a terrorist does not make racism go away. It does not make terrorism go away. It does not make hatred, or ignorance, or bigamy go away either. If anything, it makes both sides more justified in their beliefs. We should not for one second pretend that Osama bin Laden's death is the end of the movie, that everyone will go home and have tea and cookies and lots of babies and the credits roll and everyone is happy. That's not how the real world works. Bin Laden's death may or may not see Al-Qaeda elevating him to martyr status, further fueling their fight against the US. America has a LOT of work to do now. We're in no position to pack up and go home.

There may be (and probably are) some Islamic extremists who believe that bin Laden's death is further proof of the US's assault on the Islamic way of life. Just as there may be (and probably are) some Americans who believe that bin Laden's death means that we were right and they were wrong and they have no choice but to accept Western-style democracy.

I long for the day where we can all take a Zen-like look at the world. When we look at our wars and all the people who have suffered because of them and let out a big WTF and knock it off. I long for the day when we can all get along because that's what we should've done millennia ago.

The mastermind behind 9/11 may be dead but that doesn't mean that terrorism is dead and we can all live in World Peace. The battle is not over. It isn't over by a long shot.