Well At Least That's Over With (Kinda)

So friends online are getting fucking touched and shit, crying to the screens 'cause they're emotional. Remember that show you were really into, but you either got too busy or too frequently laid or too unable to afford cable to follow it, and then it languished for a few seasons and you read on AV Club that they'd overhauled the cast a couple of times, and you kinda joked about liking it once, but then they brought in the old lead, even though he'd really gone to pot too, but it kinda worked for an arc, or so you heard, and then you'd been told about the finale, and you just had to watch?

Neither do I, but here's a caveat. I know about the constant submersion we call life under power. I know that you can change the form of power and yet, like water, that power will shift and take new forms but keep the pressure up all the same. I know that great powers like to play with perception and spectacle. They like milestones, and they like distinctions on which they are on the "right side" and generalities when they are not. I know they like to claim victory, even over a mountain of bodies. Especially over a mountain of bodies. In short, I am a fool who should know better. God knows I often don't.

But if I got to mourn the coming of the Iraq occupation, then I get to spit a bitter "Took long enough" now. It is no relief, it is no pardon for the cities of dead we have left in our wake, no absolution for ethnic cleansing, no washing away of this sin. We're mass murderers, plain and simple, actors and authorizers.

But yes, I approve now, even if it is late, even if it leaves what it leaves, even if it is wrapped in Obamian platitudes and liberal rhetorical triangulation. If I have any complaints, it is about manner, not the fact that we are removing many of our armed representatives.

To our fellows who aren't shifted to other campaigns, welcome home. And, just so you know, I would even have cheered had you burned the flag en masse and come home as mutineers. Perhaps more loudly.