The real victory is not that the man is dead, but that his power over us had already been broken. His power over those of us in the first world was so great that we’ve been willing to sacrifice much of the freedom–and even wealth–that is so vital to our vanity on the world stage in fear of him. His power over those who practiced his religion, or lived in his region, was so great that he could be used to further justify the actions of dictators, who claimed to be acting dutifully, squelching imagined danger, by keeping their populations in poverty and terror.
Until this January in Tunisia. And this February in Egypt. And this moment, right now, everywhere . I was watching Mubarek fall from Vermont, where I did a residency–watching snow fall with my heart so full for folks. We were watching from everywhere.
Let’s not forget who really killed Bin Laden. Once the youth he fraudulently claimed to represent had done their work, there was no use further use for the myth of him, here or there.
I don’t know that I’m saying anything that no one has heard before. I only want to be sure that we are recognizing this moment for what it is: the symbolic end of a narrative that has been used to keep all of us, on either side of the (fictive) East-West dichotmoy, less free.
I also offer, below for your viewing pleasure, Wael Ghanim’s speech on the occasion of making the Time 100. This is the computer engineer who began the “We are All Khaled Said”page on facebook, with historical implications. He gives this speech in English (the Arabic subtitles are a bonus for the interested), and, despite his humble disclaimer, quite eloquently so. He so powerfully captures the feeling of having been wounded by the story on the Arabs as it has been told by those in power, and the victory of having subverted it.
