Some of my friends think me Pollyannaish because I am (pretty much) fearlessly optimistic. As the media careens from one disaster to another—Will it be climate change or intelligent robots that lay us low? Jihadists with suitcase nukes or White Supremacists? Will western society surrender to terrorism in a mushroom cloud or Cetaceans surfing into Battery Park on a tidal wave?
At the other end of the spectrum, friends to the right suspect the Antichrist is among us and the American Experiment is doomed. When I say, “Slow down. We’re fine.” both groups shake their heads sadly at the silly man who just doesn’t get it. The jig is up, and either Jesus is coming back or we will all die in a plague and gather at the river; and the planet will be the boneyard inheritance of cockroaches and machines, or both.
Whew. It’s exhausting to think about. But really, we are okay.
Would the Antichrist, the epitome of evil, be so notably incompetent? Back in the 70s when Hal Lindsay wrote The Late, Great Planet Earth, I imagined what an actual Antichrist might look like. I figured he’d be evil, for sure, but probably disguised as brilliant, enlightened, and good. Evil, given its druthers, would want to appear Christ-like while doing great harm—and the real evil, I was certain, would be a well-kept secret.
The evil today is the worst kept secret since we discovered that Liberace was gay. Pure evil would want to masquerade as shining spiritual good, in order to “fool the Elect”. Most wouldn’t see it coming. As it stands, our leaders support infanticide, declaim meritocracy, dance like puppets on strings held by foreign totalitarians, and openly lie about all of it. And they are terrible liars. The Father of Lies would do a much better job of it. There would be no damning laptop in the family of the Antichrist, full of shots of Antichrist Jr snorting lines off of hookers and parading around in a jockstrap. No incoherent mumbling on camera. The Antichrist wouldn’t surrender an entire nation and billions of dollars worth of military hardware to the Taliban. Everything would have gone swimmingly and he would appear a genius.
Yeah...we do not need to sweat that one much. We are governed by idiots, sure, who in their fumbling may do evil, but they are hardly the big league. They are pikers, even on that field, incapable of doing much harm or any good at all.
And the rest? Think about it. Each Disaster du jour is simply another smoke screen, a fig leaf poised not to hide great evil, but great incompetence. Climate change? If it ever happens (we’ve had “four years to save the planet” for about half a century now) those claiming to have the answers will be the least capable of actually doing anything about it. Terrorism? C’mon. We wouldn’t give a military to a group that posed an actual threat, nor would we have to. They would have had their own. The Taliban are entirely capable of terrorizing an unarmed population in a third world country that barely has running water and electricity, but how might they fare in say, Texas? Our performance in Afghanistan was like the NFL working the draft so every team has a chance on Any Given Sunday, but even now, given the right provocation, the US could reduce Afghanistan to a smoldering crater in a long weekend, and everyone (the Taliban included) knows this.
Incompetent, feckless boobs have us barking at shadows (Fictional whips on the border! LMAO!) to keep the perceptive child, who might stand up at any moment, from screaming, “Holy Codpiece, Batman! The Emperor is bare-ass naked!”
Because we all know, even the faithful lapdogs in the media, that the Emperor is bare-ass naked. This isn’t Evil. This is a bumbling clown show, a flea circus and a fraud. Elites selling a game of Let’s Pretend for no reason more nefarious than they enjoy being the elite.
This is the Good News. The world will chug along.
This is, unfortunately, also the Bad News. Our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be sifting the ashes and paying the debt for our excursion into Idiocracy. They will not be spared by the End of the World. Many decades from now exceptionally bright people, certain they have everything figured out, as so many bright people today are, will still be discussing the merits of deconstructionism and giving a fellow academic a reach around. Our tendency to budget with impossible numbers will bear irrational fruit.
It is sad, in a way. We seemed to be making such progress toward a better world. It often seems (to me, anyway) that not so long ago we were right on the cusp of realizing individual liberty and mutual respect—a world in which being different was no stigma, but no particular advantage either—but we somehow quickly devolved into a place where it is fine for a man to beat the shit out of woman so long as he is confused about his gender and it is done in a sanctioned sporting event, and the color of one’s skin ranks as far more important than the content of one’s character. But these things are just moronic detours, not evil with a capital “E”. The world remains a wonder. Life a miracle, full of mystery and with plenty of space for the imagination to run wild.
We’ll be fine. We’ll all live for awhile and then move aside, leaving the place to those who will follow. We can only muck things up so badly. We aren’t as important as we sometimes imagine.
Peace.