Spring Break
Retracting a minor Apocalypse-themed prediction
Ryan Nowell
Issue date: 1/21/09 Section: Opinion
Well, we aren't as bad off as I thought we would be.
Like most liberal alarmists, when Bush got re-elected, I envisioned his second term ending around 2019 after being delayed by a handful of convenient declarations of martial law and a few Bin Laden tapes (one illicit), the event itself wreathed in more flames and bloodshed than a pagan laser orgy (which I thought, also incorrectly, would be a thing by now. I was hitting the Robitussin pretty hard back then).
I figured most of the western U.S. would be a vast nuclear wasteland presided over by warring clans of Australian dune-buggy hooligans, and we would all be receiving our degrees from Dean Master Blaster.
I suppose this is why alarmists, liberal or conservative, are rightfully viewed as idiots, though that doesn't stop a lot of us from talking like a pack of ranting sandwich-board men every four or so years when an election doesn't go our way.
Right now there's a sizeable contingent out there convinced that President Obama is the Antichrist, on the cusp of plunging this country down a nightmarish jet luge of wanton carnality and godless progressivism (see aforementioned pagan laser orgy).
This is partly because slander and panic just suit our political system better than well-adjusted reasoning.
The news media, no longer the watchdog there to filter misinformation, instead reports whatever will draw ratings. As long as they tell us it's hard-hitting, informative journalism (which they do every commercial break, at the top of the hour and when the ticker rolls over), they're assuring us that we're staying on top of things.
Little by little, we see political observations that aren't really bright, rational, or plausible enough to warrant national airtime slowly pollute the general discourse, until a reasonable response just seems kind of boring compared to all the encroaching-apocalypse talk.
And I'll fess up, I clearly Chicken Littled Bush's last term.
Like most liberal alarmists, when Bush got re-elected, I envisioned his second term ending around 2019 after being delayed by a handful of convenient declarations of martial law and a few Bin Laden tapes (one illicit), the event itself wreathed in more flames and bloodshed than a pagan laser orgy (which I thought, also incorrectly, would be a thing by now. I was hitting the Robitussin pretty hard back then).
I figured most of the western U.S. would be a vast nuclear wasteland presided over by warring clans of Australian dune-buggy hooligans, and we would all be receiving our degrees from Dean Master Blaster.
I suppose this is why alarmists, liberal or conservative, are rightfully viewed as idiots, though that doesn't stop a lot of us from talking like a pack of ranting sandwich-board men every four or so years when an election doesn't go our way.
Right now there's a sizeable contingent out there convinced that President Obama is the Antichrist, on the cusp of plunging this country down a nightmarish jet luge of wanton carnality and godless progressivism (see aforementioned pagan laser orgy).
This is partly because slander and panic just suit our political system better than well-adjusted reasoning.
The news media, no longer the watchdog there to filter misinformation, instead reports whatever will draw ratings. As long as they tell us it's hard-hitting, informative journalism (which they do every commercial break, at the top of the hour and when the ticker rolls over), they're assuring us that we're staying on top of things.
Little by little, we see political observations that aren't really bright, rational, or plausible enough to warrant national airtime slowly pollute the general discourse, until a reasonable response just seems kind of boring compared to all the encroaching-apocalypse talk.
And I'll fess up, I clearly Chicken Littled Bush's last term.
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