I promised myself I’d never let this one slip out, but it’s too good. I have this idea for a book, you see (followed by a film after I’ve sold the rights for millions). You bastards better not bite this one. The idea goes like this: two blokes sit down to nut out a better way to ‘do’ terrorism. Explosions? How very last year. Thinking backwards, the duo think about the ‘evil doers’, then wonder about how to find a method of destroying them, and only then – maximising the impact whilst minimising ‘collateral damage’. The idea they hit upon is genius (if I do say so myself). Poison the cocaine supply. But not just any poison either, ‘cos if it took effect immediately, the offending gear could be binned before any more than a few lusty nostrils became the dust-bringer of doom. No, this stuff would have a delayed effect, say, six months. Imagine who would fall victim…
But behind the fascinating victim list that would result from this calamity would be a simple motivating the idea that drove my two terrorists, namely that ‘bad people’ would be slain and ‘good people’ spared. It’s hardly a new thought – read through the book of Revelation and you’ll see: the apocalypse is basically a nightclub queue.
‘Sorry lads, private function tonight…’
‘Nah, I’m on Papa’s list… plus one’
‘How do you spell that?’
‘P-A-P-A… The Bishop assured me tha-’
‘Sorry mate, no papa here… I’ve never heard of the Bishit or whoever…’
‘Bu-’
‘Mate, I don’t wanna hear it. Don’t make this difficult…’
It’s exactly this idea, of sorting the ‘goodies’ from the ‘baddies’ which was behind the recent foiled attempt by a groups of zealots to blow up Ministry of Sound. As Jawad Akbar said of his thwarted plan, “No-one could turn around and say, ‘oh, they were innocent’, those slags dancing around.” Even London’s chief of police said more or less the same thing in a responding press conference: "If you have 2,000 'decadent' Western youngsters in a dance club on a Saturday night; drinking, drugs and sex are all in there," the London police chief told defence journal Janes Magazine in January 2005. "If some sort of organisation wants to target a location, what better place to put a bomb?" he warned.
But the question that hit me straight away was: are they the guilty ones? Can they even be guilty? What does it take to be guilty, guilty enough to be judged and killed? Well, in most places, you have to be an adult, and of sound mind and body. Only Americans in some states kill people with mental disabilities, and Rumsfeld’s controversial plan to torture and publicly electrocute ‘young punks’ as young as ten never made it past the first round of discussions. But aside from the violent, sadistic excesses of some US states, if you’re a child, if you’re intellectually handicapped, or if you’re criminally insane, it diminishes your responsibility. It’s not to say that you ‘didn’t do it’, just that you have less control over your actions, and punishment is adjusted (or waived) accordingly.
Now think about what it means to be in the Ministry of Sound. Really think. Could you honestly be considered a ‘responsible adult’ and even want to go there? I’m not just being flippant, I mean it: in a very real way, there’s no way you can say that you’re acting and behaving as a responsible adult AND be wanting to wiggle at the MoS. This becomes true from the age of eighteen, but it is also a truth which intensifies as the years roll by. We’ve seen the sad-cases with our own eyes: a forty year-old who’s at Revolver on a Sunday could be said to be in every way infinitely more childish than a twenty year old taking their first tentative steps into the world of ‘slags’, ‘fags’ and amphetamine-enhanced folly. Hasn’t our generation witnessed the final collapse of child and adult into a juvenile heap? Children are becoming more adult, true, but adults are also becoming more childish, more childlike. Our whole culture is infantilised, we are all ‘his majesty the baby’ turning our lives into a series of impossible demands, tantrums and endless attempts to defer responsibility, defer adulthood, pretend we’re still carefree and that there are no consequences to our actions. Adults? Show me one. I don’t know any under the age of fifty. Basically, it’s as simple as this: where there are Jagerbombs, there are no adults. So how could you bomb them?
in which the naked chimp is unmasked, his machines debugged, and his bugbears debunked
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1 comment:
Maybe they will all end up getting disco-necked. Oh, the hilarity....
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