During his time in office, in 1982, Ronald Reagan famously predicted “we might see Armageddon in our life time.” Of course, he also said, “facts are a stupid thing”; so one may take his utterances within some context.
So it comes as no surprise that ‘The Great Communicator’ had his finger on the public’s pulse concerning the end times. Certainly, whatever else one can say about the man’s abilities to gloss over inconvenient facts, such as that whole Constitutionally awkward Iran-Contra brouhaha, he took a better pulse than The Good Doctor, who more often than not measures his own pulse when trying to gauge public metabolism.
Which brings us to today’s round about topic, the Mayan Calendar, which began with the Fifth Great Cycle in 3114 BC and is scheduled to end in about three and a half years, on December 21, 2012. Nearly anywhere you throw a Google you’ll run across a link warning of global extinction, evolutionary disaster, cross breeding between cats and dogs, and other troublesome boo-boos. There are entire cottage industries making a living fear mongering off the omens, celestial and otherwise, which concern more and more humans.
What are some of the omens of this coming upheaval? Well, you listen to some of the delightful and very nearly sane individuals roaming gun shows across this great land and they’ll tell you straight up that the election of Barack Obama is right up there at the top of the list. These are the same people who calmly assert that dinosaurs and Neanderthals co-existed and that dinosaur bones were buried on purpose by perky evolutionists and consider Glen Beck and his ilk a calm rational voice, so their cognitive skills are clear to see. So concerned are these advocates of law and order that the American President will take away their guns that one of them, Richard Poplawski, gunned down three Peace Officers in Pittsburgh in April after listening to the aforementioned Beck, Savage and others.
So determined are these devotees to protect The American Way that they are quite willing to decimate the parts of the Bill of Rights that don’t apply to gun owning white Christians. Moreover, so enamored are the true believers of the nation that in addition to placing magnets exhorting passers-by to “support the troops” and displaying bumper stickers that warn weak kneed neer-do-wells to “Love America or Leave It”, nearly thirty percent of state residents who define their political affiliation as republican are either ambivalent towards or in favor of seceding from the United States. Not unlike a political Schrödinger’s Cat, these folks both want to love America and leave it before the 2012 box is opened. What swell patriots they are.
Add to this apocalyptic equation the recent results of a survey by a Harvard professor named Robert Putnam, who says his research indicates that the percentage of youth who defined their religious affiliation as “none” had jumped from between five to ten percent to between thirty to forty percent. The fact is that many polls, when they address the question of church attendance, focus on religions centered around the Children of Abraham, that is, followers of Christian, Jewish, or Muslim faiths. Other seekers of a spiritual path are usually funneled into the category of “Other/No Affiliation”, which means that if you practice Shinto or Wicca, Buddhism or a Native American path, you’re just SOL. Speaking of alternate faiths and 2012 prophecies, Hindu prophecy, which uses a calendar amazingly similar to the Mayan calendar, states that 2012 might well see the start of a five thousand year Golden Age for humanity. One may scoff, though who are we to heckle Lord Krishna?
In other news, I note that once again I have missed “Taser Your Sons and Daughters at Work Day”. However, former guard Walter Schmidt of the Franklin Corrections Institution in Florida is thankfully on the ball. In order to demonstrate “what a day at work is like”, and after asking parents for permission to do so, Mr. Schmidt demonstrated the power of a fully operational death star - I correct myself, a 50,000 volt taser on the assembled nubbins. According to the winsome Walter, “the big shock came when I got fired.”
As was pointed out earlier, facts are a stupid thing. Who knew common sense was as well?
Now, if you will excuse The Good Doctor, I go back to practicing my Google tossing.
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