Today is the day to celebrate one of the most incredible decade-long periods of mankind's talent for not giving a shit. Today we exalt the true gods on our planet - our mortgages and material possessions, TV talent shows and our head-in-the sand unquestioning consumption of mainstream news.
Ten years ago today three buildings at the World Trade Centre fell down, the Pentagon got hit by something and a large hole in the ground appeared in a field in Pennsylvania. We were told by the news anchors and the mainstream papers how those buildings collapsed and what made those holes in the Pentagon and the field appear and we said thanks for letting us know without asking for any real evidence and got back to watching X-Factor in our rented-from-the-bank homes.
Soon after the US went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq and Britain, like the little bitch we are, followed and got stuck in to killing some little brown people in the name of preventing terrorists from doing something similar in future. Afghans and Iraqis died in huge numbers and relative obscurity news-wise while the odd one or two British troops died here and there and made front page news.
Individuals suspected of involvement with terrorism were re-branded as "Enemy Combatants" and were snatched from all over the world and flown to prison-camps where they were detained without trial and tortured with Deicide at full-tilt (Probably tracks from
Insineratehymn - the worst album ever.)
All kinds of draconian laws were introduced here in Britain and other "free-countries" limiting our civil liberties and preventing us from doing all sorts of things including protesting in certain places and taking photographs of the wrong buildings.
And we (and I mean the majority of us including me) just sat on our fat arses and let it all happen.
Most of us didn't question the information we were given because it required no effort to receive that information. Televised news is on just before or after the nation's favourite soap operas and game shows so it just washes over us as we sit eating a takeaway on the sofa. We didn't go out and seek the information from other sources if we were interested in certain aspects of a news story we just assumed that the version of events that the BBC or Sky tell us about is the definitive version.
The newspapers deal in as much celebrity and sports gossip as they do international current affairs so for every story we read about Cheryl Cole's hair extensions we also read one about a foiled threat to an airport or a 19 year old from High Wickham who volunteered to take part in an illegal war and astonishingly got killed on the battlefield.
The last ten years has seen the most advances in communication technology in human history yet we're still happy to receive our news from traditional sources. The advent of widespread internet use has brought us Youtube, Facebook, blogging, tweeting and countless tools for what's become known as citizen journalism and has provided us with many alternative viewpoints and sources yet we're still too lazy to use these for alternatives to the mainstream media.
Personally I've done some research myself and it's helped me to answer some questions I've had on some of the aforementioned events but have you? There are alternatives to the BBC, ITV or Sky but will you look into them? Will you fuck.
So instead here's to another ten years of atrocities with questionable perpetrators, news reports of Islamic terrorists threatening us all in our very homes and scoffing at mentalist conspiracy theory nuts with tin-foil hats.
Here's to Simon Cowell and Cheryl's new teeth. Here's to Arsenal's new striker. Here's to new shoes and unlimited free salad down the Harvester. Here's to paying our mortgages and our credit cards. Here's to the news anchors we know and trust. Here's to passively accepting what we're told by the papers and channels that we really only read and tune into for entertainment but have the power to shape our opinion on the important stuff.
Here's to not giving a shit. Cheers.
