Dick Cheney's unsatisfying death

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In a final thumb in the eye of the American left, the International Criminal Court and the belief that the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice, Dick Cheney passed away peacefully and surrounded by loved ones on Tuesday.

If we’re to put any stock in the stories we tell ourselves, it isn’t supposed to be this way. Our fictional villains are dealt with quickly and brutally. Anakin Skywalker got chucked into a lake full of lava shortly after killing an entire preschool. Those Nazis in “Raiders” and the Wicked Witch of the West both got melted for their scheming. Freddy Krueger was burned to death by an angry mob. Ditto for Frankenstein’s monster. Vampires face the swiftest and most poetic justice, bursting into flame and leaving a pile of ash the second their sinfulness is exposed to the light of day.

The former vice president fit the role of both monster and creator, riding a platform carrying the Project for a New American Century playbook up above his castle and waiting for a lightning strike. When one came on September 11, it was Cheney rampaging through the halls of power, calling for wars in Middle Eastern countries that had no connection to the attacks. 

The neocon torture advocate turned a vampire’s appetite for oil and military contracts loose on the region, masterminding a war that caused the death of an estimated half-million Iraqis. This Nixonian Bavmorda used his power to make the far-right fringe’s cynical and paranoid vision of the United States a reality. A warped, old Saruman, he ushered in an era of endless mistrust and the requisite surveillance.

Cheney helped author our world, and he didn’t write an ironic comeuppance for himself. (Though a self-described socialist winning the New York mayorship on the day of his death is close.) There’s no grasping, demonic hands waiting to pull him down through the petroleum reservoir. In our world, the burning windmill is a theme park attraction, an abstraction of mortal danger that you can gawk at before grabbing a beer. 

Like Henry Kissinger, Donald Rumsfeld and Margaret Thatcher before him, he got to leave the world with the full knowledge that he got everything he ever wanted and paid almost nothing for it. He’ll no doubt receive a state funeral with all the honor that entails.

No one preparing to eulogize the late Cheney would ask for our opinion, but if we ever lucked into the chance to play script doctor, we’d take inspiration from a Scottish trade who didn’t want to chance seeing Thatcher’s like again. Before Cheney heads to his eternal rest, make sure there’s some garlic around his neck.

What do you think? Was seeing his party turn to Donald Trump enough of a punishment for Cheney? Does seeing the attempts to soften Dubya’s image post-Trump make you a little ill? Click the speech bubble icon to sound off in the comments.

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