Same Shit, Different Apocalypse

I’m a veteran of a number of apocalypses.  They come, they go.

I was raised in a religious cult that emerged from William Miller’s failed prediction that Jesus would return on October 22, 1844.  He made other predictions about the second coming, too, and they didn’t happen, either.

As I was growing up, those around me had occasional outbursts of breathless certainty that we were on the very threshhold of The End.  “This is it!” they would say.  “Get right with god because the end is here!”

Jimmy Carter was the antichrist.  Ronald Reagan was the antichrist.  George H. W. Bush was the antichrist.  Bill Clinton was the antichrist.  George W. Bush was the antichrist.  Barack Obama is the antichrist.  And whoever wins the next presidential election will be identified by some group — probably several — as the antichrist.

Remember Y2K?  My old friend Scott loaded up on survivalist supplies back then so he’d have plenty to eat after all the computers went down and took civilization with them, and he was huddled in his little house in St. Helena with his gigantic safe bursting with guns and ammo, waiting for The End.  He doesn’t talk to me anymore, but he’s probably huddled in the same house right now, with the same gigantic safe bursting with even more guns and ammo, waiting for ... whatever.

Some people have managed to enhance their panic by connecting the most recent Batman movie and the last few mass shootings with what is now known as the “Mayan apocalypse.”  Some people are waiting for the phantom planet Nibiru to slam into the earth, others are waiting for massive solar flares to fry us all to a crisp, or for an alignment of the planets to turn the earth upside-down, and still others are waiting for the U.N. troops to storm the United States and take away all our guns and throw us into concentration camps under the direction of Barack Obama, the current antichrist.

You know what I’m doing?  I’m waiting for everybody to STOP TALKING ABOUT THIS SHIT !  I’ve had my fill of end times and apocalypses, of antichrists and dire warnings and doomsday predictions.  Don’t we have enough real problems without having to worry about the end of the world, for crying out loud?  I mean, it wouldn’t be so bad if there really were a planet on a collision course with earth, or if we had reason to believe the sun was going to barbecue us all in an apocalyptic burst.  In that case, I could understand it.  But that’s not the case.  Instead, everybody’s quaking in their boots because of a bad interpretation of a goddamned ancient calendar!

What is it about us human beings that keeps us from enjoying our lives?  What is it that makes so many of us insist on looking ahead to some moment of doom based on ... well, on nothing!  What’s so wrong with just relaxing and enjoying each other in the time we have?  That’s what I’d like to do, but it’s kind of hard when everybody's always going bugfuck crazy over another goddamned apocalypse!
 
KNOCK IT OFF, PEOPLE!
 
NASA has been bending over backwards to reassure people that the planet Nibiru does not exist, that the Mayan calendar in no way predicts The End, that the sun is fine, that the zombies aren’t about to rise from the earth in search of brains. In a video on the NASA website, David Morrison, a senior scientist and astrobiologist at NASA's Ames Research Center, says:

“NASA has received thousands of emails and calls from members of the public who are concerned, especially young people.  So it seems only right that NASA scientists should help dispel these rumors of doomsday.”

I used to be one of those young people who lived in fear of the end of the world and I know what it’s like.  I’m glad NASA is stepping up to try and clear away the smoke.  But for a lot of people, it just won’t work, because so many of us seem to be convinced that something’s coming to wipe us out.

NASA has also provided a few examples of other notable predictions made by the Mayans that did not come true:
 
OTHER BAD PREDICTIONS MADE BY THE MAYANS:

Donald Trump will be worshiped as a god.

The 1983 NBC series MANIMAL will be a cultural sensation.

Regis Philbin will be far too annoying to be successful in show business.

America will spend decades under the rule of the Kennedy dynasty.

Nostradamus will be an obnoxious quatrain-spouting douche destined for obscurity.

There’s no way Barack Obama will get a second term.

Elizabeth Taylor will be revered for her beauty and marital fidelity.

In the future, domesticated cats will be reviled for centuries.

Anal sex will never catch on.
 
December 21, 2012, will be no different than the date of any other predicted apocalypse.  By that, I mean that it will come and go like any other day.  It may be eventful, it may be a slow news day, but it will not be the last day.  And on December 22, those who were waiting for the apocalypse will begin, once again, to annoy the fuck out of those of us who weren’t by searching for some other hook on which to hang their fear and paranoia.

Relax.