Posthuman Blues

I'm groping for words virulent enough to express my disgust with the United States, with its phony president, media-soaked voters, morbid religiosity, and utter disregard for truth. Many long-forgotten societies mused that they were living in the "end times," but I have the horrible sense that this time it might be for real. The future looks unnervingly bleak; if we're lucky, in fifteen years we'll be living in a world that's a particularly stomach-wrenching rendition of John Brunner's "The Sheep Look Up."

It's no accident that religious "fundamentalism" is looking so bright. It promises the ultimate easy escape. Dreams of the "Rapture" -- the premise behind the "Left Behind" phenomenon -- are the intellectual equivalent to an all-expenses-paid trip to DisneyWorld, where nothing is as it seems but everything is imminently agreeable. Why care about the oceans dying if you know that you'll be whisked to safety when disaster strikes? Why give a fuck about anything?

One way or another, the milieu that's been developing since 9-11-01 will end. But we're past the point of controlling how it will end with any degree of accuracy. We've tossed our rationality onto the bonfire like so much kindling.

We wait like passengers on some vertiginous malfunctioning ride. The unseen technicians in the control room know the ride's doomed; they can see the widening hole in the tracks. But they've weathered disasters before and see no purpose in heeding their senses when previous debacles have been so successfully marginalized and erased from public conscience.

Now the ride is nearing its end. And if you pay careful attention to the faces of the passengers in those last cataclysmic moments of rending metal and oily smoke, you'll notice that almost all of them will still be smiling.