Bad news, everyone. I just reached into my bag of fucks and couldn’t find any to give when it comes to the controversy du jour: murderous savages getting water poured on their faces.

And according to my admittedly unscientific survey, 95% of the American public is also unable to muster any outrageous outrage over water being poured on faces. Oh, sure: The punditocracy and politicos all go on tv, and recite the same, tired platitudes about “stains on our conscience,” and all the rest of their dreck, but they don’t care either.

When you really, really CARE about something, it sticks in your head; it eats at you. You throw your entire existence into the subject at hand. You work day and night to solve the problem. It isn’t hitting “like” on Facebook and calling it a day. Does that sort of caring adequately depict how you feel about bad guys getting bags put on their heads?

Because now, everyone plays pretend all the time. They PRETEND to care that Islamic fanatics got water poured on their faces. They PRETEND to be outraged that a jerkoff got shot after punching a cop in the face and grabbing his gun. They PRETEND to really, really care about what some actor says in a Playboy interview. I could go on and on. But now, everyone is conditioned to Say The Correct Thing. Any deviation from that results in… what, exactly? Mean tweets?

And, then, after every single person in the media decides to do a story on it, they all start the same: “Controversy is building…” or, “The backlash on the internet was swift…” or something to that effect. When, in reality, nobody cares. It’s just the media talking about themselves, and since they are Super Cereal, everyone should pay attention to them.

When it comes time to form an opinion on this extremely serious topic, I find it helpful to think back to that day on September 11, 2001. It’s important to remember the context of that time. WE DIDN’T KNOW WHAT WAS HAPPENING. For all we knew, there were thousands of sleeper cell suicide bombers loose in United States just waiting to fly more planes into buildings.  Even the most fervent hippies out there were baying for blood; we wanted to hurt people, not “start a dialogue” or “have a conversation” or whatever the useless phrase of the moment is.

Our problem in this day and age is simple: our memories fade far too rapidly.  Nobody seems to remember that fateful September morning in which we here on the West Coast awoke to see smoke pouring out of the Twin Towers and civilians jumping to their deaths.

We don’t remember the thousands of innocent civilians who just went to work that day, only to end up in ashes.