“I’m going to do something to you no man should ever do – I’m going to take away your enemy.”
Mikhail Gorbachev to Ronald Reagan

    Ding dong, the witch is dead? The whole world is abuzz today about the death of Osama bin Laden in a heroic raid by US Navy SEALs. Pictures and video are bandied about. Names get put up on walls. Medals get handed out. Champagne corks fly by the thousands, like some fizzy honor guard. But there is one question nobody’s asking.

What do we do for a Bad Guy now?

     America is a nation of cantankerous bastards. Yes, you too in all likelihood. We thrive on conflict and drama, and why not? Conflict is highly motivational. Nearly all of our greatest technological advances have come from the desire to wage bigger and better wars, to cause greater destruction while protecting ourselves. Our soldiers stroll nonchalantly through mountains of bodies, fording rivers of blood to carry our message to the world: “Don’t Fuck With America.” By and large, that message comes through loud and clear. We’re good.
     What keeps us so good? We’ve had good enemies. There has always been someone we could point to and say “That’s the Bad Guy right there.” The Russians served as really good Boogeymen for the longest time, and why not? A gigantic empire in the frozen north, populated by muscular giants who always seemed to be just drunk enough to punch out the windshield of your car. Granted, that last bit is partly about the Russian accent but there’s a good deal of vodka involved there too. Rocky IV was a very thinly-veiled reference to the plucky underdog United States standing up to, and defeating, the Russian juggernaut simply through sheer force of determination. Never mind that a real-life Ivan Drago would have had to send out search parties to find Rocky’s rib cage. It was a good American myth. The Russians were really great adversaries – I kinda miss those days.
     After the fall of the Soviet Union, the soul of America needed a new Bad Guy. It couldn’t be another empire – we’d toppled the only one left in the world, and that just wasn’t scary anymore. We needed something that really acted as a motivator, and we needed to be creative about it because Americans were getting soft again. This time, we wanted an enemy that wasn’t a giant unbreakable monolith, but one that was small and numerous like a swarm of bees. A beeswarm is massive but you never seem to be able to hit it, and when you do manage to make a dent it just moves around you and keeps stinging. So we invented the myth of the Terror Cell, creating images of swarthy brown invaders scuttling through our streets, acting like Americans until they decide to strike. In our media and movies the Terror Cells were small and autonomous, and apparently endless in supply. Now, by “myth” I’m not attempting to imply that terrorism isn’t real, or that terrorists don’t exist. I’m simply pointing out that what we know about terrorism comes to us from the media in the form of a myth. Hell, even the name “Al Qaeda” was a media invention, and now it’s a household name!
     Now most of our action movies are about terrorism, except that Muslims don’t motivate us the same way the Russians did. Fighting the Russians made everyone feel like a soldier, ready to stand up and face the enemy over there. With the new Bad Guy, the fight isn’t over there – it’s over here. Suddenly we no longer have a safe haven to protect, and even our civilians are warned about the dangers of letting down their guard. The faceless Muslim Threat might be too effective of a Bad Guy.
     See, the value of having a really worthy adversary is that it motivates you – everything you DO revolves in some way around getting the drop on the Bad Guy. With the Russians, we knew their Achilles Heel – technology. So we built better smarter weapons and trained better smarter soldiers. Sure, they had more nukes but ours were bigger and better. When you choose an enemy, you should choose one you can beat but not too easily. The Russians could be beaten because they were an empire, a single political entity that could be toppled. Never mind that it collapsed under its own decadence and antique infrastructure – we took the win anyway.
     But with the Muslim Terror Cells (and let’s face it – when you read the word “terrorist” that’s what you think of) there is no single enemy that can be toppled. It’s a swarm of bees that stings from all around, nimbly evading any attempt to strike back. Is it a coincidence that Osama bin Laden looks just like the circus guy wearing a beard of bees? Probably, but that image is going to linger awhile.
     The point is that Terror Cells actually aren’t a good choice of Bad Guy when seeking to motivate your citizens, but it’s a great choice if the objective is to keep your citizens so paralyzed with fear that they’ll submit to any amount of harsh or invasive treatment. Did we have TSA ball-jugglers during the Red Scare? Hell no – we were SMOKING on airplanes back then! Did we cheerfully submit to roving wiretaps? Nope. There’s a lot we wouldn’t have put up with when the Russians were the Bad Guys, because they weren’t scary enough to scare us. Now, I’ve simply stopped flying because I refuse to be treated like a terrorist by an organization that hasn’t caught a single terrorist yet.
     How do we measure up against our Bad Guys? Well, for starters we’re not as good as our legend says, but that’s beside the point. The use of reputation or authority as a magical tool is well established. It keeps our confidence high while demoralizing enemy troops, and despite what every movie about high school will tell you, a reputation pretty much only comes into existence if it’s been rightfully earned. Oh sure, there are plenty of exaggerations around but, in reality, where there’s smoke there’s fire. The Stoner kid? Yeah, he was actually getting high a lot. The football hero? Yeah, he worked really hard and practiced all the time and made lots of touchdowns. The slutty cheerleader? Yeah.
     America started out winning wars right off the bat. We started getting a reputation and a history. Never mind that the White House was burned down by (can you freaking believe it) Canadians. Never mind that we crept up on the British and murdered them in their sleep on Christmas. Never mind that the Heroes of the Alamo were thieves and slave traders who dropped to their knees and begged for mercy at the feet of Santa Anna. Our legend grew, and in turn we became a really really effective Bad Guy for other countries.
     What kind of Bad Guy is America? We have several advantages, namely being far enough across the ocean to let our reputation grow over distance. Up close, personal contact with a Bad Guy tends to take away his power, because the oldest and strongest emotion is fear and the oldest and strongest fear is the fear of the unknown. If more of our enemies overseas got to see Americans who weren’t shooting them from helicopters, our reputation would probably diminish. If they got to take a tour of Alabama, it would disappear completely.
     So we’re not only distant, we’re huge. We’re one of the few Superpowers left in the world, and to an outside observer we’re certainly the most invasive. America gets into everyone’s business, and starts taking sides. We also have lots of elite military and paramilitary groups who operate with near autonomy, dropping into strike zones and making lots and lots of people dead. Just yesterday, such a group finally took out bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan.
America is therefore the ultimate Bad Guy – all the monolithic enormity of the Union Formerly Known as Soviet, with all the bee-swarming unstoppability of the Muslim Terror Cell. We’re a big target, but the cost of striking us is too high for most enemies to deal with.

     Now, in case you were starting to wonder about the title, yes there is a magical lesson here. Choose your Bad Guy wisely – and don’t bother pretending you don’t have one. We all have one. Make sure it’s someone or something you can actually do something about, but not one so easily toppled that it’s not motivational. We all need an adversary now and then, a whipping boy for when we’re riding high and a boogeyman for when we’re slacking off. Without an enemy, we tend to get complacent and then soft. Enemies provide an excellent workout, even if you don’t actually intend to hurt anyone.
     Remember the work of the Dagger – the act of creation consists of defining something by what it is not, but taking that chunk of cloth and slicing away everything that isn’t a shirt. When we choose our Bad Guy, the wise choice is to find an enemy that espouses (or can be assumed to espouse) all the characteristics we do not want in ourselves. It doesn’t matter if our new enemy actually is all those things or not – the enemy is merely a symbol, our personal Choronzon, and until it comes time to Cross the Abyss every magician is going to find it very handy to have an anti-Self to brace against. So choose wisely – your choice of enemy also defines yourself.
     Also take care to choose wisely what kind of Bad Guy you are. Naturally in our own mythoi, we’re the Good Guys but to everyone else we represent the things they aren’t, and since they’re the Good Guys … guess what you are. Be sure to play to your strengths – the last thing you want is to fashion your adversary-self as something easily exposed as a sham. Beware of giving away too much information about yourself – the less they know, the more details they have to invent (and they will invent them!)
     Summing up, Osama bin Laden may well have been the perfect boogeyman – reclusive, mobile, almost ghostlike in his ability to disappear and reappear elsewhere, and in command of his own swarm of bees. That particular queen bee is dead, but his legacy lingers on for those willing to take a lesson from history. Remember that it’s especially important to be absent from time to time, to let the memory of you grow larger. Even in death, your legend will linger on.

“What you looking at? You’re all a bunch of fucking assholes. You know why? You don’t have the guts to be what you wanna be? You need people like me. You need people like me so you can point your fucking fingers and say, “That’s the bad guy.” So… what that make you? Good? You’re not good. You just know how to hide, how to lie. Me, I don’t have that problem. Me, I always tell the truth. Even when I lie. So say good night to the bad guy! Come on. The last time you gonna see a bad guy like this again, let me tell you. Come on. Make way for the bad guy. There’s a bad guy coming through! Better get out of his way!” – Tony Montana to a restaurant full of people who didn’t dare say a goddamn word