andrewdewaard.com

so there’s this fella by the name of jean baudrillard, i hope youve heard of him. if not, he’s the french guy who said, among other things, that the first gulf war didnt exist. not because he’s some glue sniffing french whino, but because the average joe dumbass experienced the gulf war as a simulation, a video game war played out on the propaganda of television news. this is kinda similar to jfk jr’s assassination, some say it is the moment when the postmodern age began. an instantaneous universal media extravaganza, forever shattering the american dream and signalling an era of uncertainty and confusion. im doing a lot of simplification here folks, feel free to fill in the blanks, but the point is: we dont really “experience” things in a ‘Real’ way anymore. which gets me back to 9/11.

i say, september 11 did not happen.

pretend we’re talking about something else for a second, like cats jumping around all nimbly bimbly, got the visual in your head? and then i all of a sudden say “SEPTEMBER 11!”. what enters your mind? you probably think of how unbelievable the whole thing was, and where you were that day. but invariably, you will soon think of the television screen in your head, where news coverage of the plane hitting the building is playing. its probably that one angle where the second plane comes in from the right side of the screen. or maybe you think of that shot where the debris and smoke are filling the streets and people are running frantically towards the camera to get out of its way? weve seen that shot before, and weve seen buildings get blown up before too. september 11 happened in our collective imaginary every weekend at the local cinematorium. every fiery explosion accompanied by a witty catchphrase, every multimillion dollar action sequence using the latest state-of-the-art computer graphics, every movie that we imagined and filmed our very own destruction in, we experienced september 11.

then it happened, the real “manhattan disaster movie”.

but it wasnt real. sure, people died, but we’ve seen that all before. we see people die EVERYDAY on tv. how exactly is this different from the thousands of people that senselessly die every other september day? are we fooling ourselves into thinking this is some earth-shattering history-defining event? are we that self-absorbed and out of touch with reality that we need to collectively pretend that something as minor as september 11 is really THIS big a deal? i mean absolutely no disrespect to those who died, and i do not for a second condone terrorism (god forbid someone talk about september 11 in a less than reverent way, he must be a terrorist-sympathizer! if september 11 is this big a deal, then we should be able to discuss it in a civilized manner, so dont get all huffy about my approach to this unfortunate day). but come on people, 6 million jews dying, thats an event. 1 million rwandans dying, thats an event. what is happening RIGHT NOW in sudan, that is an event. this is two thousand people, what woulda been - shoulda been - a footnote in history. except for the strange reaction that occured as a result of september 11.

mother fuck the war on terror.

start and win a war on cigarettes. how about senseless car accidents. how about fucking homelessness? or FAMINE? or POVERTY? or any of the other real issues that are taking a LOT of peoples’ lives. even if you are concerned with the “security” of your country, how about nuclear weapons proliferation? oh wait, look who the harbourer of weapons is in that much more serious case. not “terrorists”. unless you live in the middle east or chechnya or something, terrorism is not an epidemic. the average person’s succeptibility to propaganda, that is an epidemic. the current state of the average person’s knowledge on politics and the media system’s responsibility for such information. that is a epidemic. how about we stop being scared and starting LIVING our lives as well as CARING about other lives? september 11 is not a big deal, and that is not an outrageous statement. even the way september 11 has been raped and exploited to further corporate america’s agenda to make money, no matter how many fake wars need to be started or innocent people need to be killed; not even that is the outrage. the outrage is that we are COMPLICIT with it. we are the villains in this tragic movie.

and we have absolutely. no. fuckin. idea.