Black Hats

 In the wake of the events of this past weekend, I have been quietly reassessing my perception of good guys and bad guys. 

I remember how I felt when terrorists attacked New York and Washington D.C. My general rule of pacifism was sorely tested when thousands of innocent lives were taken on September 11, 2001. When Tom Petty played "Won't Back Down" to a nationwide audience during the Tribute to Heroes broadcast ten days after the assault, I had a feeling that could best be described as righteous vengeance. I wanted someone to pay for the ambush on our east coast. 

For a while, we were the victims. The United States was this beacon of hope and these horrible people had tried to snuff it out. 

So we went to war with a country that had little or nothing to do with the actual attacks on that day. Two of them, actually. And somewhere in the midst of all that setting things right, we stopped being the good guys. We became the imperialist invading force that set up Burger Kings to fee the troops in the middle of a desert and made sure our interests (oil) were looked after. We were going to make it safe for Americans going to work in enormous buildings devoted specifically to the task of accumulating as much of the world's wealth as possible. 

Oh yeah, and to catch the bad guys who did that horrible thing. 

Just under ten years after the terrorists brought down the World Trade Center towers, United States Navy Seal Team Six made a daring midnight raid on the compound of Osama Bin Laden, killing him and disposing of his body at sea. 

And that announcement tweaked that same vengeance muscle that Tom Petty got nearly a decade before. 

Rah. Rah. 'Murrika. 

That feeling hung around for a week or so, until I started thinking about the revolutionaries who had this clever idea to fight the King of England for their freedom. The Declaration of Independence has a place in our National Archives because we won that war. Don't ask me why there are all those statues hanging around commemorating the leaders of the losing side of the Civil War, but I can say that the big sunken black wall listing all the names of those who died in America's ill-fated involvement in Vietnam got it just about right.

What sort of monument will there be for the soldiers who carried out the raid that captured Nicolás Maduro? Maybe a stool at the end of the bar after the eighteenth hole at Mar A Lago. Given the draft-dodger in chief's penchant for plaques, this sounds like a sure thing. They'll get on that right after they finish trying to ruin the reputation of a retired Naval Aviator, astronaut and senator. With only a slight detour to rewrite the history of 9/11 with the convicted felon insisting falsely that he "predicted Bin Laden." 

I'm pretty sure we're the good guys anymore.