Without knowing anything of whatever is going viral, I have definitely seen some pretty shallow takes on how dumb Gen-Z must be to start reading bin Laden.

Of course such takes completely fail to address at all the content of the letter and why in the world it would have some resonance right now.

Which, for anyone remotely familiar with the letter, paints them as pretty uninformed and probably “old and backwards” in the eyes of younger people looking back on the 9/11 era with the current Gaza situation and the US’s super-boomer president’s position in mind. And, moreover, finding volumes of relevance in just how old the letter is (relative to them) and how apparently “dangerous” it is to read, to the point of censorship, for something that can read as surprisingly cogent and applicable right now.

If it is actually going viral amongst Gen-z, this could be millennials’ “ok boomer” moment, where the 9/11 experience has passed into history and our forever enemy bin Laden, who millennials can’t fathom as anything other than a monster, might make more sense for some on current politics than some of us do.