Posthuman Blues

Remember 9-11? You know, when Palestinians bombed the Empire State Building or something like that? Remember all of the tear-jerking inconography that infected our streets immediately thereafter? It's back! Clip-on flags fluttering from the cabs of pickup trucks whose drivers assail us with wit such as "Real Men Love Jesus." It's like a bloom of noxious toadstools. Shiny "American Pride" stickers: "These Colors Don't Run." You've seen 'em.

The one I like the most informs viewers that "We Will Never Forget" 9-11-01. Let me make something clear: as atrocious as the attacks were, in a million years the human race will have ceased to exist in any recognizable form, and I somehow doubt anyone's going to give a damn about them. If humans are around in a mere few thousand years (in one mind-boggling posthuman incarnation or another), they will have necessarily made it past this "God and Country" fixation that presently engulfs the world like a grisly caul.