Did you have a Merry Armageddon? - Part 2

Same as it ever was.


And just as ludicrous predictions about Iraq, terrorism, global warming are allowed to slough off over fall away down the memory hole leaving their authors and pundits unscathed, so too are a swarm of pinhead prophets left free to scam and terrorize again and again, and orphan their own reckless, wildly wrong and often bigoted predictions and imputations made in the name of God.

Because to truly, honestly frame any discussion of this millenial jagoffery, it helps to understand a phrase – “Appropinquante finem mundi…” – that a friend of mine passed along to me long ago, and which I’m sure I have butchered in translation.

It’s Latin for “Same as it ever was”.

Actually, it’s Latin (more or less) for “Now that the end of the world is at hand…”

It is also a quick peek inside of the flattened mind of the Biblical Literalist. The man who cannot function at a metaphorical or allegorical level and who bluntly divides the world into shit that didn’t happen and shit that did.

If it didn’t happen, fuck it.

If it did happen, well then pay attention.

This is a perfectly fine mental calibration to have when approaching history or chemistry. So, for example, the Battle of Tours took place on a particular date and no other, within a particular context.

Hannibal was not defeated by Tomahawk missiles.

The atomic weight of Selenium is 78.96.

You cannot poke the Moon with a stick, no matter how high a roof you find to perch on and how much on ippy-tippy-toes you stand.

Even if you stand on your brother’s shoulders on that very same roof and he stands on ippy-tippy-toes.

Even if you throw the stick. Unless you throw it at upwards of 25,000 miles per hour. And have VERY good aim.

So literality has its uses, but it becomes a cultural disaster when you try to crush faith into that frame, and it is at this point at which these so-called Christians fail Christianity; at which Fundamentalist try to mortar-and-pestle the poetry and parable of religion onto their tiny skulls. This is the precise mile-marker at which millions upon millions of American’s have decided to abandon the Enlightenment and flee pell-mell back into darkness.

And as a handy guide to you, the discriminating political shopper, this hysterical demand by stupid people that Christ must be recrucified on their Procrustean Cross is a quick-and-dirty-and-depressingly-reliable litmus test for determining who among us should never, ever, ever be allowed to hold national office.

Because any way you deconstruct the GOP, when you spread all the constituent parts out on the shop floor and there is no way to escape the fact that the Christopaths (and assorted other unaffiliated bigots) form the overwhelming mass of Planet Republican, while old-school Eisenhower or even Goldwater Conservatives are little more that an onion-skin thin layer of reflex-driven tax cuts and nostalgia.

And any Party in the hands of Fundamentalists – here or on the other side of the world -- should be automatically be considered unfit to govern. Because Fundies demand that their faith not just be respected as emotionally or spiritually true, but historically and scientifically true as well.

And it’s not.

And for over 1,000 years, the sentiment of "Appropinquante finem mundi…” has been the unmistakable spoor of these perverters of genuine Christianity.

Because 1,000 years ago, the Fundies of that time were so absolutely positive that the world was coming to an end RIGHT NOW that they signed letters in that way.

In this deed (dating from January of 979) they were so convinced that some began doing a little Heavenly Estate planning; socking a few more sou away in their Celestial 401K before the Final Tax Man came a’callin’:

Deed of Gift of the village of Ligoure
(primitive name of Saint Sauveur)
to the Abbey of Nuaille in Poitou, by
Guillaume, Count of Poitou, Duke of Aquitaine
in January 979

The deed declares:

“Increasingly frequent calamities ring to us as of now the unquestionable proof of the nearest end of the world...”

Or consider this more general description of the fever that was abroad in Christendom ten centuries ago. And how familiar it sounds:

The most detailed and numerous documents testifying to the apocalyptic atmosphere at the end of the tenth century come from Anglo-Saxon homilies. Written by bishops and clerics preparing their flocks for the day of the Lord, alternating between feverish apocalypticism and more cautious agnosticism about the exact moment of the end, they stand under the looming shadow of Antichrist's release at the end of 1000 years.
One of the Blickling homilies, for example, declares that in 971 the thousand years were nearly fulfilled, and all but the final signs of Doomsday had been fulfilled.

… although, with the passage of the millennium, Aelfric seems to have toned down this aspect of his thought, his colleague Wulfstan refused to be discouraged by a prophecy failed. About 1010, Wulfstan declared that although "A thousand years and more have now passed since Christ... and now Satan's bonds are extremely loose, and Antichrist's time near at hand, and therefore the longer it is in the world, the weaker it becomes."

Me?

I say more power to ‘em, but let’s balance the scales. I say if you want to engage in speculation under the color of authority that results in scaring the crap out of people and potentially costs lives and fortunes as, your personal downside for being wrong needs to be as dire as your prediction.

I say, if you want to predict the end of the world – or, say, take this country to war based on equally ludicrous “faith-based” intel -- you have to be willing to give your Beretta a blowjob if you screw it up.

Imagine how much more credible -- and careful -- Bush or Cheney (whoever is playing President that week) would have been when they were selling their war in Iraq if part of the down payment they had to make was going on Russert, slapping a Glock down on the table, saying:

“Tim this is not like WWII, so I need to ask for the nation to trust that we are acting responsibly. I realize I am asking young Americans to take this fight to our enemies in a country that has not attacked us or threatened to attack us, and that I am doing this having never once risked my own life for this nation when I was given the chance.

“So because the price I am asking is so terribly high -- the lives of our soldiers -- I, too, will bet my very life that I am right. And if I’m wrong – if there are no WMDs, no nukes, no Al Quaeda links – I will return here one year from today and eat a bullet. “

If Millennialists are right, of course, won’t I look silly. I will embrace my inner HL Mencken and after standing in line for my Final Judgment as long as a mope in the Saturday night condom line at Walgreens, “…I'll walk up to God in a manly way and say, Sir, I made an honest mistake.”

That’s if I’m wrong.

If they’re wrong, I say it should become pro forma to strips them of money an property.

For starters.

Then we show up outside Jebusbunker and with an amplified, Heston-voice as deep as Yahweh’s own rain barrel, tell ‘em Jesus is outside waiting for them, and (to steal a line from Robin Williams) he’s eight feet tall, black, and he’s pissed.

We order you to send the send the kids out.

Then lob in assorted shotguns and boxes of ammo (should they have forgotten to stock such essentials) and tell them in the voice of our Radio Shack Metraton that God had turned His back on them because all but one of them is unclean and a doubter and secretly queer.

And until the Righteous One purges the sinners, he cannot enter into the Kingdom.

Then sit back and let the problem fix itself.

End Part 2 of 2.