Chamblee54

Teju Cole continues to tweet. There are two items today that caught the attention here. The first is this: ‏@tejucole “I learn more about privilege from what I get wrong about misogyny than from what I get right about racism.” There is probably a backstory there. 140 characters can only say so much.
The second tweet, and the subject of the bulk of this feature, goes like this. ‏@tejucole “Everything I want in a piece of writing is here: Daniel Mendelsohn’s essay on the unburied: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/05/unburied-tamerlan-tsarvaev-and-the-lessons-of-greek-tragedy.html …”
The link is to a story in the New Yorker, Unburied: Tamerlan Tsarnaev and the Lessons of Greek Tragedy. It seems as though nobody in Massachusetts wanted to accept the remains of Tamerlan Tsarnaev. The body is in an unmarked grave, in a tiny cemetery in rural Virginia. The New Yorker quotes various stories in Greek literature, which has no shortage of violence. In the end, even your worst enemy deserves a decent burial. “This is the point that obsessed Sophocles’ Antigone: that to not bury her brother, to not treat the war criminal like a human being, would ultimately have been to forfeit her own humanity. This is why it was worth dying for.”
America is currently killing people, in neutral countries, with unmanned aircraft. There have been reports that funerals have been targeted. There are even reports of killing “terror suspects”, and then returning to attack the funeral later. At what point do you forfeit your own humanity?
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.