It was a Dirty Day

Bhutto: It could happen here, couldn't it?

The assassination of this person is one of the most ghastly and depressing events of the half-decade.

If you had asked me eight years ago whether a courageous leader like this might have been gunned down in the U.S. nowadays, under these circumstances, I probably would have answered "No" in spite of having studied a number of prominent assassinations in the U.S. "Things have gotten better," I hopefully think.

But that is probably not the truth. Something has changed. Whereas much more care would have been taken, in the past, to conceal this sort of evil we have seen in Pakistan, now it is just out in the open. People expect it. How many of Bhutto's friends have you heard say, "It is not a surprise"?

And Bush is doing it too. It's obvious that we are doing the wrong thing, but we have been so brainwashed or worn down or worked to death that we can't even fight back anymore.

We have sunk so low it is almost beyond belief. We now prepare ourselves mentally, in advance, for the possible, unspeakable assassination of our prospective leaders. People are openly talking about their fear that some of our candidates might be killed if nominated. Isn't that sick? Isn't that strange, that we have become a society that contemplates this as "the price of being a politician" in this era?

What scares the hell out of me is that this might be the new paradigm for how those in power deal with their opposition. It's so very easy, and so difficult to prove. And there are no third parties to intervene in these matters.

Sometimes people here ask the very good question, "Why would you give up?" It is events like this that make me wonder if we good can ever triumph. It's a black, black day. Or as Bono/U2 eloquently wrote, "It was a dirty day. If you're looking for explanations, I don't understant. Throw a rock in the air and you'll hit someone guilty."

The message of the past 36 hours seems to be: "This is the way it's going to be now. You can march, protest and prostrate to reality all you want, but it won't change the fact that power can kill and change the fate of the future at will."