Blue Monday

A generalised whine about the perils of rose-tinted glasses.



Today is January 24th. The most depressing day (according to scientists) of the most depressing month of the year. And to cap it all, it's a Monday too. January is like the longest Monday in history, so to actually be stuck in the middle of a January Monday is something akin to purgatory. So I need to do something to distract me from this christawful dog’s ringpiece of a day.

I suppose it's unfortunate for me that I have no enemies to distract me. That would be the best solution, as it would undoubtedly give me something to focus all my hatred on, and put my hopes and desires in that context too. Having someone whom I hate and fear with all of my heart would probably make the day seem much easier to deal with. Do you know what I mean? No? Well, if you can bear to stay with me on this one, you very soon will do.

Whilst reading through a magazine recently, I noticed that it referred to the years of the Cold War as a "golden age for peace in the western world". I re-read the piece, just to make sure it hadn't been soaked in some sort of invisible irony. Apparently the author was completely serious. He felt that the 40 odd years of cold-sweating fear of nuclear war constituted a golden age. I've mentioned this to one or two people, and it seems he's not alone in that opinion. An awful lot of people feel less secure now than they did then. Why?

Well, it's my belief that the reason for today's world being considered far more dangerous than that of 20 years ago is that we don't have a monolithic, seemingly unstoppable enemy to distract us from our everyday fears. During the Cold War, we all grew up and grew older on the understanding that the USSR was, at any moment, going to kill us all. They were, as far as I was concerned, plotting to take over the whole world (that's what happens when you get your early political theory from your mother...) and either enslave us all, or turn us to atomic dust. When one has all that on ones mind, it's sorta difficult to concentrate on the everyday existential ennui and torpor that is a feature of the post millennial western world.

But the cold war ended with the 80's. And did we all explode in happiness at the release of this nightmarish pressure? Did we hell. If one looks at the popular culture of the UK and (especially) the US through the 90's, one is struck by just how many disparate groups we were being told to be frightened of. It's as if, free of the burden of hate and fear at long last, all we wanted was something else to be scared of. Is it a coincidence that the most popular TV series of the decade was the X-Files, a show which told us that something was indeed out there, and given half a chance it was going to abduct and anal probe us with satanic glee? In fact there was something of a rash of shows that tried to convince America that they had to look to the skies to find their next enemy. However, pretty much every show through the 90's that did try to create a new enemy almost always fell back to the exact same plot; it was the government wot really did it.

To me, it seemed that we were engaging in a collective national introspection in both the UK and the US. And it doesn't appear that we like what we'd found. According to popular culture, our governments were part of epic, epoch-spanning conspiracies involving any and all semi-mythical bogeymen from Aliens to Aryans. Their only interest was in experimenting on us, or trading us on an intergalactic slave market, or turning us into unthinking consumerist drones. In other words, deprived of someone or something to concentrate our hate on, we all seem to go a little bit hysterical. It didn't matter how outlandish the enemy was (or at least, it didn't to David Icke). All that mattered was that we had one. And for some reason, we seem to need to know who our enemy is in order to feel happy. And if we don't actually have any enemies? Well, we can always rely on the TV to tell us whom we SHOULD be hating.

Of course, it's not just the TV networks who were kind enough to create enemies for us; Governments are pretty good at it too (as an aside, perhaps one of the more annoying things about the likes of David Icke, Alex Jones, and other self-serving conspiracy theorist out there is this; by insisting on ranting at length about how the government are made up of reptilian aliens who practice night-time rape rituals overseen by mythical owls, they make us automatically skeptical of anyone who tries to point out that perhaps those people who are our rulers might just be a bunch of money-hungry hypocrites. Thus it's impossible to call a government into question without being thought of as a little paranoid. Thanks guys.)

Look at the global hysteria about Al-Quaida. Here is a group whose membership numbers a few thousand (perhaps even a few hundred) individuals. They were concentrated mainly in a few camps in countries like Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia. But if you listened to the increasingly shrill briefings given by Blair and Bush, they're an evil organisation ran by a supergenius. They have their dark tendrils snaking across the world, ready to sink into and corrupt the purity of our wonderful western way of life (incidentally, has anyone stopped to think why Osama Bin Laden hasn't attacked Holland? After all, according to Dubya, he only hates us for our freedom...). They all have Einstein's intelligence, Hitlers evil, Hercules' strength, and Moses' fashion sense. And seemingly, the only way to beat them is to shoot or bomb everyone in the middle east who's skin is offensively brown whilst trilling mindlessly that anyone who disapproves of this approach "may as well be beheading hostages in Iraq".

It works both ways of course; the fun-loving criminals in Al-Quaida are doing their very best to convince the people of the Muslim world that the US and UK are the twin Luciferian nations of Gog and Magog (if those names aren't proof that the bloke who wrote the Revelations book of the Bible wasn't tripping, I'd like to know what is...) made reality. Both their worldview, and that of Dubya and his Neo-Conservative buddies is nothing more than fearmongering lies. But those lies have so far been persuasive enough to cause war. Why should that be the case when anyone with half a brain can tell that both sets of cockwits are lying?
Could it be because we're all so desperate for an enemy to focus our hate on that we're willing to be so blatantly lied to in order to get one? It's an unpleasant conclusion to come to, but unfortunately it's one that seems to make sense. Nothing unites people like a common enemy; Dubya's re-election would seem to prove that, as would the Labour governments insistence that anything other than an election victory for them will invite a terrorist attack. Maybe we need to remind ourselves that the "golden age" we lived in up to the end of the 80's was not much more than 40 years of holding our breath and waiting for oblivion. That hardly seems like an ideal scenario to go back to.