It occurred to me that in my mind it had never properly registered that the bomber was no longer alive. It wasn't any firm conviction, it wasn't a belief or an article of faith. Unlike many people the bomber didn't represent anything to me, except perhaps chaos, an unlikely and unlucky event like a plane crash personified in a particular individual of no note. It was like the limbo an actor who was well-known but has long been absent from the limelight occupies. You forget whether they're alive or dead: try to remember and there's nothing there. They were never a real person to you. But with a slight start I realize that I know very well that the bomber is dead. I know that they strapped him to a table and put poison in his vein, an inoculation against fear for a culture on the skids. I don't feel any sympathy for the bomber, who I view as insane. I don't feel that justice was done, or that the conditions the bomber rose out of were ameliorated in any way. But I know for a fact that he is dead: this is the gift society gives to the man it hates, a gift it withholds from the man it once loved.
klik if you demand tedious explanations of every little thing.
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