Apocalypse Now?
by Libby Hellmann

Originally posted Tuesday, May 20, 2008

A cougar runs through Chicago's Uptown... and is gunned down.

An earthquake rumbles up from downstate.

Gas is over four dollars a gallon... and climbing.

In Chicago 36 people are shot during the first warm weekend of the year, while natural disasters in Asia kill hundreds of thousands of people.

Americans face unprecedented debt, soaring commodity and food prices and sliding home prices.

Something's happening, and it's not good. I'm a simple, superstitious soul at heart (I figure I was a sturdy peasant girl in a previous incarnation) and I can't ignore the signs. Are we on the precipice of the Apocalypse? I've always subscribed to the "other shoe theory of life" and I keep wondering when and where it's going to drop and how bad it will be. Are these apocryphal events a harbinger of disastrous times ahead? The fall of Rome... the coming of the barbarians... you fill in the blanks.

What's worse, I have the sense that it's all accelerating. Alvin Toffler warned us about this. I'm almost afraid to check the news these days—a cataclysmic event seems occur every day.

Of course, I could be just a tad paranoid. A real chicken-little. In fact, my sister-in-law asked me not to write about this. Her opinion—very Buddhist, I think—was that giving words to my fears might hasten or lend them credibility. (Now who's the real paranoid, you ask?)

Kevin Phillips writes that even though more than 80 percent of Americans now say that we are on the wrong track, most of us still believe that the United States is unique, chosen by God. He goes on to say that "So did all the previous world economic powers: Rome, Spain, the Netherlands (in the maritime glory days of the 17th century, when New York was New Amsterdam) and 19th-century Britain. Their early strength was also their later weakness, not unlike the United States since the 1980s."

Is that so?

I'm willing to acknowledge that I'm overreacting. And that I'm wrong. In fact, this may be the only blog where I really do want you to tell me I don't know what I'm talking about.

So, what do you think? Talk me out of this.

Please.

All content © Libby Fischer Hellmann.