That's clever

Juli's last blog posting was clever: "Ding Dong the despot's dead." I liked it. When the munchkins sang that in the Wizard of Oz it was indeed a celebration; it was the death of fear. Death is always symbolic. It is more a time of transformation than an actual ending (other than for the person who actually died). Death is for the living. We are the ones who have to survive it.

When I turned on my computer that morning, I was kind of surprised. I had only heard snippets about it on NPR, and thought absently that it still must be months away. After all, how long did it take us to get Slobodan Milosovic in prison for his crimes against humanity? What about the Rwandan genocide, and the leaders of the tsutsis and hutus, who fed young men full of drugs and sent them out to commit genocide with machetes? Anyone seen Blood Diamond? Go. They trained children to gun down women and children with automatic weapons. And last but not least, Darfur.

Juli is right. He is not alone. This planet is full of fearful people who do incredibly evil things to protect themselves from change. But like death, it is inevitable. And like death, it will transform. I saw the article and cried. Not because I feel that what he did was right. It is despicable. We must use his death as a call to create peace in our own lives. Like attracts like, and peace has no choice but to follow.