I wrote this to a friend when Kissinger died, which on reflection brought about by his deathday seems a waste.
So farewell, then, Henry Kissinger. With your last act in this world, ie leaving it, you provoked such an outpouring of joy and jubilation that I briefly wondered if karma is something that can go so negative it becomes positive, an awful two’s complement of death, betrayal, and venal self-importance. But then I remembered that the world is not run on a cheap microprocessor from the 1980s, and your awfulness can be laid out on an infinite track of horror on which you outran most other humans even in your youth, and then somehow, for some reason, kept running.
I’m sure you had your good moments. You had ambition, which apparently we are supposed to value despite numerous counter-examples crowding each other out for news space even on the day of your death. I imagine you regularly sent flowers to your mother, when she was alive and when they weren’t needed to flatter a dictator or to help you ignore the stench of your own actions. And your very life’s work has inspired untold millions to reject everything you stood for, which counts for something although it’s so slight you that you wouldn’t notice it against the toll that life’s work has demanded of humanity.
When I am old and grey, I will look back on my life and will have had barely a fraction of the impact that you have had on this world. For that I suppose I should give thanks to your memory, you monster.