The Apocalypse

No, not the sweet X-Men villain, I’m talking about the real Apocalypse. I feel the end is coming. Writing this, I can’t help but feeling like one of those crazy doomsayers who hold signs. Do I think it’s coming December 21, 2012(the end of the Mayan calendar)? Not necessarily, nor am I saying anything cataclysmic will happen that day. What I do think, is that we as a species, our days are numbered.

Things that have influenced me:
I watched the news for 20 minutes yesterday, nothing like making you feel upbeat. The only non negative thing was the weather, but saying that snow may still come, I don’t know how positive that is. The 4 major topics: the economy, war, disease and death. Why those sounded so familiar…Pestilence, War, Famine and Death are the four horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Go to CNN.com or any news site, if you can get through it without finding a single sad story, then you are in the minority.

I have watched three of the darkest movies recently which haven’t helped matters. (Apocalyptico, Watchmen and Slum Dog Millionaire).



War
Let’s get the obvious out of the way. We are currently stuck in a war we can’t win. We are stuck in a war which is actually hurting the economy - probably the only war ever to have that claim. We are stuck in a war we entered with false pretenses. We are stuck in a war which will actually hurt our national security when it’s over. We are stuck in a war where we didn’t accomplish what we set out to do. Sure we stopped Saddam and his Weapons of Mass Fiction, but we as a nation were only interested in getting Bin Laden and targeted our aggression elsewhere. No we didn’t topple Al Qaeda, but we did bomb their caves a little bit.

How well off would we be if the US-Iraq war was the only war going on in this world. Tensions are high between countries all the time. There is always some country preparing missiles or targeting nukes at a different country. The US gets threatened almost constantly with some sort of terrorism attack. If you don’t think terror is common then go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents,_2008

We’ve come a long way as a nation which had turned its back on the holocaust. The holocaust had been going on for 8 years, and America still hadn’t entered World War 2. It took an attack on our homeland for us to enter war and defend others.

Likewise 09-11-01 and 3-20-03 was only a year and 6 months apart.



Famine
We live in the best country in the world. Even though many people believe and think this, we’re not doing so hot right now. The future isn’t much brighter either. For the first time at the economic summit meeting, President Obama had to defend the principles of our economy. Are we the only country with problems? Hardly. But that’s the point, if we’re having problems then god knows how the other countries are doing. I know for sure we aren’t the only country with economy problems.

Is the economy directly linked to famine? Maybe not as an American issue, but it is as a world issue when so many people are starving throughout. Comparing famine with the homeless people you see begging for money in a downtown city may not be fair. But it’s like comparing Micro and Macro economics. Same general concept.

The economy is so bad….How bad is it?
The economy is so bad, that someone got trampled to death during a black Friday sale. Think about that. Someone actually died saving someone a few dollars…
The economy is so bad, that many newspapers can no longer afford to print every day.
Think about that. That is the whole point of a newspaper, to bring the news every day. When you are forced to deliver in issues, you are no longer a newspaper, you are a magazine. They are essentially black and white magazines with ads galore.
The economy is so bad, that we have had to spend 780 billion dollars to stimulate the economy.
Think about that. The economy is so bad, we need to spend more to fix it. That’s the American way right there.

The cigarette tax just went up. Now I don’t smoke, so I’m not the one complaining. But I think we all know that this is a money issue, not a health issue. No one cares that McDonalds is so successful…except maybe Morgan Spurlock.

Don’t even get me started on the whole gas issue. People were so mad when gas prices went up. Justified or not, at least you saw people exercising more and going the speed limit.

All you hear about lately in Michigan is the car crisis. I’m not going to even look up the numbers that the government has given to keep GM and Chrysler afloat. All I know is that it doesn’t match what I thought capitalism was. Who’s going to end up paying in the long run? Everyone in the US will pay, but mainly Michigan/Detroit. Now I’m not saying it wouldn’t be bad if these companies went under. It will be bad, for a bit. But that’s the power of our free market economy. Let someone come in and buy one of these companies and run it correctly.

And boy does Social Security need some work. For the first time ever this year, the fund didn’t grow. Which only means probably next year, it will lose money. That’s the beginning of the end of something I’ll never see a dime of.



Pestilence
We aren’t as bad off as we were during the Dark Age, that is for certain. Anything else is up for debate. Is health care over priced? Yes, but at least we have made such strides. No we haven’t cured cancer or aids yet, but it’s only a matter of time. Salmonella is creating a problem for food we eat. Just in this last year we’ve had to watch Tomatoes, Eggs, Peanut Butter and Pistachios. There’s even been pet food poisoning recently. Bird flu, where did that come from? We can’t open the mail anymore without worrying about Anthrax. I’m probably being silly but it’s not like I’m making this up.

The pollution problem in this world is going to get a lot worse before it ever gets better. I believe that garbage is a serious problem and will cause more disease before it’s over. Landfills will run out, global warming will heat up and the O-zone will burn. It’s going to take something massive in this world for us to get it together.

Computer viruses are still viruses. We live in a cryptic age when we have to pay a company money for identity theft.
Think about that. Please take my money so I can live without worry about someone pretending to be me. These viruses do whatever they can to get our information and destroy us, just like a real virus.



Death
If I had a dollar for every murder-suicide in the last year, I would be a rich man. So many disturbed people would fire rounds of bullets into crowds. It’s always the same. He was quiet and there was some mental health concern, but nothing that would suggest this. Clearly I’m on the gun-control side of the fence. The less, the better. No one is safe. One of my favorite heroes was wrestler Chris Benoit who up and killed his wife and son before turning on himself.

Death is all around us.
Hurricane Katrina – 1,836
9-11 – 2,998
Iraq War – 4,263
Indonesia Tidal Wave - 225,000

Mother Nature takes it out on us through hurricanes, floods, flash and forest fires, earthquakes, cyclones, tornados and tidal waves.

We do more damage to each other though. While not as bad as Columbia which is the murder/drug capital of the world, we still have our own problems. Serial killers have caused god knows what pain to families. Drunk drivers have killed many an innocent.

Yet jails are so crowded, many people undeserving of a release…get it.

We have come along way from human sacrifices, plundering each other’s villages, coups and revolutions. But we have along way to go to prevent this.