Appreciating the Brent

Without getting too personal or too mushy, I figure the best way to spend this Houston-bound afternoon flight is to reflect on the very reason I’m making this trip: My brother.


This year for my birthday, my brother sent me the following items.

1. 5 lbs of Haribos (gummy bears).
2. Moleskine notebook.
3. DVD copy of The Room.
4. Pair of silvered aviator sunglasses.
5. Texas flag.
6. Gundam Heavyarms scale model, direct from Japan.

I’m not sure whether this list says more about my brother’s creativity or my completely eclectic, crazy personality. Together, they’re the best birthday package I’ve received in a long, long time.

Look. Apparently, siblings can be a complicated thing. I have sweet, innocuous, reasonable friends who constantly battle with their blood relatives. Some of these otherwise reasonable friends of mine won’t even speak to their respective brothers and sisters. More commonly, though, there’s some rift—a lack of common ground or an age difference or an insurmountable distance—that keeps them from enjoying what might otherwise be a very rewarding relationship with the closest thing to a clone that nature and nurture have to offer.

With that in mind, I’m practically the luckiest guy in the world when it comes to siblings. I only have one. We’re separated by an age difference of two years. We see each other at least twice a year. And by some divine providence, we have the same warped, meme-tastic sense of humor, which is something I demand from each and every person I chose to bring into my closest inner circle.

We love YouTube Poop, /b/ memes, the weirdest shit that Adult Swim has to offer, Bret Easton Ellis, cheesy videos by Paul Wall, the collective nothingness of Charles Bukowski, jaded liberalism, trolling our friends, TV shows that haven’t aired since 1998, professional wrestling and, above all, our mother.

Aww.

Now, it would be unfair to keep going without first mentioning that we do have our differences, too. These are things we have learned to set aside in light of everything we have in common. He drinks beer and I chug it, but we both can sit down to a beer and laugh about the latest stupid thing we read on the Internet. That’s what being brothers is all about, I think. I’m hardly the expert on people.

I’m lucky to have a brother like Brent. I’m also incredibly proud that he’s been able to excel at everything he’s put his mind toward: His degree in literature, his relationship with Dina, his out-of-college job, and just about everything but keeping his room clean. Heheh, lol.

So congratulations on making it this far. I'll see you in three weeks.

Bad Things Come

So how are good people supposed to feel when terrible people die?

In the aftermath of Monday’s late-night announcement that Osama Bin Laden was killed in a spectacular firefight, I’ve seen all sides of the argument. My Facebook news feed has been a mishmash of rabble, apathy, opportunistic joking, disgust and celebration. Some of my friends have already penned eloquent responses to the news. Others drop precision-guided cynicism bombs loaded with the potent fact that Bin Laden’s death will not stop America’s continuing military endeavors in the Middle East.

And then you have the sanctimonious humanists. These are your far-left political cartoonist types who only see the world in shades of “do not kill.” My Twitter feed and (to a lesser extent) my Facebook feed were both hit with a deluge of messages reminding me that killing is wrong, no one deserves to die, and that even Osama Bin Laden has a family. Well, they’re less reminding me of those things and more reminding me how bbbbad I am for cracking a smile at the news. Moral posturing might be another name for it.

I miss having a prepackaged moral compass because it makes dealing with these sorts of situations a whole lot easier. Back when I had a head full of Vonnegut, I’d be up on that hill pointing and huffing at anyone who posted this song last night. And on the other side, there was once a time in my life when I’d have been downright ecstatic to hear that Osama had taken one between the eyes. Either way though, I would sleep soundly knowing my position was right.

My experiences throughout the past five years have taught me that the world is a highly complicated place where no canned response is a truly fair response to news of this magnitude.

• Cynicism is an insult to the well-meaning individuals who have died in the past ten years trying to bring an awful man and mass murderer to justice.
• Blind enthusiasm over Bin Laden’s death does nothing to improve the human condition. Obviously, this world isn't going to get better with more death and destruction.
• Pacifistic piety is selfish and, though sometimes well-intentioned is also ignorant to the complexities of a world where crazy people who hear voices are trying to kill innocent families for no reason other than to prove a point.

The only thing I really knew in the wake of the news was that I was unsure about my own feelings. This made me feel unprincipled. Big news tends to do that lately. I can’t jump into a respectful argument and see it through to the end without stopping to second-guess myself or concede to the other guy. But I decided to take this opportunity to really sit down and trace out my feelings, point by point, until I’d actually made a position on this issue.

So then how am I supposed to feel now that this dude is dead? I started by thinking about the dude himself.

Listen: Bin Laden was not promoting a progressive social agenda. He wasn’t fighting for the proletariat or the little guy. He’s no Che Guevara (who maybe kinda arguably had violently-executed good intentions) and he’s no hero. I think anyone who dedicates their life to murdering innocent people and disrupting peace has a place in this world that’s situated about six feet underground. And whether the means to that end is an expensive military raid or a less-expensive missile or maybe an expensive raid followed by an expensive spectacle of a trial, it’s the ultimate justice a man like Osama Bin Laden deserves.

So that’s how I feel about him.

Here’s how I think we’re supposed to feel about his death: Justice was served. Whether you frame that feeling with a smile or an uneasy, suspicious slanty-face is your prerogative. But Osama Bin Laden’s death is not the sort of occasion on which you can build a convincing argument for either pacifism or warmongering. There are millions of people all over the world who deserve your undivided sympathy and compassion more than him, his followers or his family. Conversely, you can’t argue after ten years, billions of dollars and thousands of dead Afgani civilians that the ends justified the means.

A bad man got what was coming to him at a great cost to the world. America did what it said it was going to do ten plus years ago and affirmed that you can’t just murder 3,000 Americans and expect to get away with it. A man once thought to be invincibly illusive is now shark food. Anything else that might be said is just noise or a portent to some bigger issue that is not the death of Osama Bin Laden.

So, he’s dead. And I feel pretty good about that.