The World Has Become a Slightly Better Place

Yes, yes, "tears of the world are a constant quantity" and all, but the world became a slightly better place today when the brutal Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet bit the dust. The air has become slightly less sulfurous, I think. His coup on Sept. 11, 1973 ousted the democratically elected socialist President Salvador Allende and unleashed on the world, Operation Condor, a joint effort between nationalist dictatorships and military juntas in South America whose messianic nationalism saw them as the final defense against atheistic communism. Operation Condor, then, spread terrorism around the globe, including the assasination in Washington, D.C., of Orlando Letelier by car bomb, which killed an American, Sheridan Circle. This in spite of the fact he was an American ally, supported in his crimes (as the historical record increasingly shows) by Henry Kissinger and the Nixon White House. Then there were the "desaparecidos," the poor bastards secretly arrested and murdered by the dictatorship (numbering in the tens of thousands).

While I'm sure there are many words that should--and need--to be written about this remarkably foul specimen of our species, at the moment all I can say is good riddance and here's to roasting in hell you God-awful son of a bitch.