Good God, you aren't kidding. Every time I go into a thread about new consumer technology, all I see are posts about "My granpappy never needed any such thing, so neither do I, dagummit!" Come on, people! Of course no one NEEDS this stuff, but we live in a highly advanced, wealthy country, and the toys you can play with (if you have the money) are really, really cool. Check it out sometime rather than claiming it's witchcraft, please!
Nobody is saying you can't have your expensive toys. Look, I hope I never have to go back to dial-up after having a cable modem but I don't whine about the people who are happy with dial-up because it may be all they need given their amount of usage or income level.
It's a matter of price/value. For you and many others, it's worth it. For me and many others, it's not. The difference is that the government is going to eventually force people into switching to HDTV because they want to re-sell the analog TV frequencies for more money. The government is not forcing people who are on dial-up internet to switch to high-speed even though high speed is better (and more expensive).
If the government told you you HAD to buy a Hummer when your old pickup works just fine for a lot less money, wouldn't you resent it or do you just blindly accept what your government tells you to do?