One for the Road: Who cares?

I’m not sure if there is a rule that states the more news you watch, the less you care. But, in a world of smartphones and the 24 hour news cycle, I’m convinced there is an inverse relationship between the amount of scary stuff we see on a screen and how much emotion we feel while viewing it. And, at least in terms of our mental health, that might be for the better.

On a general level, I would say that the anaesthetising effect that occurs when a brain is oversaturated with news is a bad thing. It makes us complacent, uncaring, ineffective; all stuff that is conducive to the kind of world where offensive wars can be launched without real public opposition and where genocidal regimes can do their worst, virtually unhampered.

It makes us docile, submissive and politically dead, in a Brave New World kind of way.

But, that being said, with all the madness going on at the moment – from the US threatening to nuke Iran, to Pakistan promising they would do the same to Israel, to the UK buying jets capable of carrying nuclear warheads, to the continuation of the destruction of Gaza – there is a selfish, cowardly part of me that is quietly thankful that a lifetime of constant current affairs and unwaning war correspondence has blunted my sensitivity to the horrors, miseries and existential dangers of the world.

If I really took it all onboard, and I mean really took it all onboard, I don’t know if I could function, let alone be happy.

At the time of writing, Trump is currently being celebrated as a global deliverer of peace on account of the key role he played in bringing an end to what he is calling the ‘12 Day War’, which, perhaps more paradoxically than ironically, he was instrumental in starting in the first place.

His involvement in the conflict between Israel and Iran has been like that of the man who encourages his friend to start a fight in the pub, before surreptitiously joining the ruction himself and hitting the fella he has set up a few dirty shots from the side. However, where pub justice would see the instigator fired out the front door head-first, Trump, instead of getting the unceremonious heave-ho he deserves, now sits at the bar being bought drink by the barman.

Right now, after weeks of deception, double-crossing and duplicitousness, he is sitting upon the high stool at The Hague, where NATO Chief Mark Rutte is fawningly praising him as the hero who done what others were just too afraid to do; namely, destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities. This, remember, is despite leaked documents from the White House which reported that the impact of the so-called bunker-bomb strikes on Iran’s uranium enriching facilities have had a relatively negligible impact on the progress of their nuclear ambitions.

Looks like Mr Rutte knows how to treat a narcassist. Flattery 101.

But while the most powerful wotsit in the world is in Holland having his ego stroked, telling all the lads how he has set Iran’s nuclear programme back by decades, I bet I know what the Supreme Leader Ayatollah is at: Rounding up every fifth year in Iran with a B in their GCSE Science to start working overtime on a nuclear programme so that he can get his hands on the same radioactive deterrent that has kept North Korea and Kim Jung Un safe from US interference since 2006.

Then there is Gaza. Then there is the fragilility of the ceasefire. Then there is Ukraine. Then there is the suppossedly least peaceful country in the wold right now, Yemen. Then there are the other 22 conflicts officially classified as wars…

LIke I said, if I really took it all onboard, and I mean really took it all onboard, I don’t know if I could function, let alone be happy.