Retropost: Holy Shit

Retropost #604 (13 de noviembre de 2005): Holy Shit

Me he leído recientemente Pattern Recognition, una novela de William Gibson que va mucho de post, entre otras cosas de postmodernismo, de posts en foros de Internet y del shock traumático post-11-S. Para ponerme más a tono, me he empezado a apuntar al foro/blog de William Gibson . Un sitio muy recomendable para aficionados a la ciencia-ficción y a esos posts. Allí he leído divertidas reflexiones sobre Gibson, por ejemplo las de un tal the Blue Raj. Dice the Blue Raj sobre el síndrome apocalíptico post-11-S:

"we are on the cusp of something, some strange and God all monster nodal point that all the weird events of today are some odd harbinger of..." Gibson in this instance is just one of several billion Jeremiahs atop the city walls, wailing, ’Whoa lookit DAT!" We’ve entered not just a new century but a new millennium. The still most powerful nation is decidedly Xtian, and of an Apocalyptic bent. Y2K approached and gave us a very real, even quantifiable End of World bogeyman. It was, in fact, so real and quantifiable that WE WERE ABLE TO FIX IT... ...what a let down, eh? World Not Ending after all. Then for USA at least, and its reflective nemesis, militant Islam, the End was declared alive and well and nicely imminent when two planes torched the Two Towers. The more rational of us said something sensible like ’whathafuck?’ but the righteous saw them as the Hammers of God or Satan. Summary: millennial fever started with a wet firecracker. 9/11 lit the fuze and blew the lid off. Now we’re rolling down not just a precipitous geopolitical incline, amid an increasing pall of environmental meltdown and growing arsenals of WMD, but we’re also sliding down a trough of mythohistory.

Comenta Saturnine:

That is disgustingly hilarious and accurate. Great imagery sir.

Comenta JoseAngel:

I agree with Saturnine. Further:

Quote from the Blue Raj: "Then for USA at least, and its reflective nemesis, militant Islam, the End was declared alive and well and nicely imminent when two planes torched the Two Towers. The more rational of us said something sensible like ’whathafuck?’ but the righteous saw them as the Hammers of God or Satan."

I seem to remember that the actual sensible quote of the day, by a passerby on one of the broadcast videos, was actually "Holy shit!" - which was both spontaneous and a philosophically accurate description of the events.

Y en efecto, es lo que se oía decir a un viandante en uno de los vídeos caseros pasados una vez y otra hace cuatro años, al ver que un avión impactaba en la segunda torre: "Holy shit"!, literalmente "¡Mierda sagrada!" y equivalente en román paladino a algo así como "¡La hostia puta!" Mal nombre le van a dar a la religión, en efecto, tanto los abyectos fundamentalistas como el prepotente Bush – "with God on our side", que ya se reía Bob Dylan.

But now we got weapons
Of chemical dust
If fire them we’re forced to
Then fire them we must
One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions
When God’s on your side.
In many a dark hour
I’ve been thinkin’ about this
That Jesus Christ
Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can’t think for you
You’ll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side.

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