2012 is supposed to mark the end of the world. Yeah? I don’t believe it. I refuse to believe it. Doomsayers and chiliasts, not to mention Nostradamists and Joachimites, would have us believe in a coming conflagration, an end of days, the Eschaton. They’d have the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse riding roughshod over our dreams and aspirations. Human existence on Earth, they affirm with conviction in their voice and fanatical eyes, shall cease. Why do they prophesize such horrific scenarios? Why such a dark end to our species? It depends whom you ask, but wickedness “as in the days of Noah,” bad stewardship of Mother Earth, alignment of the planets, World War III’s nuclear holocaust, and alien seedpods come to mind.
Do you remember that Bible-thumping 88-year-old loon who predicted the Rapture would occur in May and the final destruction of the world in October? I initially thought the Rapture did in fact occur when I came home and found my daughters’ clothes laying about the house—in the bathroom and their bedrooms. “The Lord has snatched my children,” I said to myself, “and spared them the coming tribulation!” Then I remembered that Erika, Jessika and Monika are just slobs who don’t pick up after themselves.
Perhaps you’re aware that the Mayan calendar supposedly predicts the end of the world in December of this year. Some Mayan apologists are already trying to weasel out of the prediction by claiming 2012 marks not a cataclysmic end but a spiritual rebirth, just like those evangelical prophets à la Hal Lindsey and Pat Robertson who always have an “escape clause,” a revision of their forecast, to explain the anticipated tribulation of Second Coming not coming to pass. (On a side note, would that we’d observe those passages in Deuteronomy which specifically instruct us to stone a false prophet!)
I have no use for such alleged prophesies. Disregarding dark, dystopian depictions of the days ahead, I have decided to forge a better path for our future. I simply refuse to accept the forecast of fire and brimstone. True, I’ve already stockpiled weapons, food, water, a generator, a few more weapons, and oxygen tanks in my underground bunker should Armageddon arrive, but I’m too much of a positive person, someone who sees the glass half full, to let hateful prophets and doom-and-gloom merchants win. So what am I going to do about it? In short, I’m going to usher in the kingdom myself!
Here’s my plan. First, it starts with a vision of the future. I see a world in my mind’s eye that is full of laughing children, one in which equality and tolerance reign supreme. When I’m finished implementing my plan, we’ll look at hate and violence as we look back at the dinosaurs: Did those fossils really have life in them in the distant past and dominate Earth for so long?
Next comes the aforementioned implementation. First, I’d build a makeshift prison cell in the basement of my house and round up the wicked in my neighborhood. I would detain them indefinitely, until I found a way to dispose of them without drawing attention. Yeah, my neighborhood is not the world, but you have to start small and work your way up. Once I take power in a coup, things will of course unfold on a grander scale. That is, my team of clandestine operatives and paramilitary units will set up reeducation centers for those who have potential to contribute to the new utopia and “sleeping camps” for those who don’t. The point is that to make the world a better place you must destroy evil and its practitioners. I don’t want to belabor my plan for a future utopia of peace, justice and love. Suffice to say, I’d avail myself of a secret police force, a network of informants, censorship of the press, a one-party system, massive propaganda, lots of posters of me, more detention camps, death squads, the targeting of certain groups, and the development of a new language that dehumanizes and vilifies the remaining minorities of bad people.
What I have set out to accomplish might seem a tall order. My mother always told me to dream big. I will usher in the kingdom, and when I do, people will sing my praises. I do not seek gratitude, however, but merely the opportunity to serve my fellow man. Eliminating the doomsayers is only a means to an end. My ultimate aim is to ensure we not only have a future, but a better one.
