I remember when I was a kid, and used to go to Church, hence, read things like The Book of Revelations, and had discussions with friends about it. We were young, and stupid. If I still believed in that kind of thing, I would have to cast myself now as old and stupid. But belief has faded, and I have moved on.
Back in those days, though, friends and I used to talk about what it would be like to live through the events described in the Bible. We were flooish enough to think in the first place that it might be kind of fun or amazing, and in the second, that we might actually be among the survivors.
No, here I am approaching fifty, and seeing the world in a mild form of Armageddon, and that the biggenst problem isn’t the Armogeddon itself, but the people in it. I am more worried that danger comes to us in the form of someone carrying a virus and a huge ego than anything else.
Things have settled in for the moment. If we get sick, we get sick. Hopefully it will be mild for us if we do. But that can only be taken a day, a moment at a time.
Beruit blew up the other day. They were dealing with Covid, too. They have experienced Armageddon in magnitudes so mugh higher than we. It looks like the crater is roughly the square footage of two football fields. Three hundred thousand people were made instantly homeless. My heart is completely broken for those people and what they are going through now. The facts of the investigation that will follow will prove no doubt that the cause of this catastrophe comes down to corruption, and when it is all finally spoken out loud, I will not be surprised to see civil war there. I have yet to hear of any response from American leadership on the matter, and that disgusts me. We could have started a ground war there in a matter of a day or so, with the logistics and military capability we have. We could have won a diplomatic coup with that kind of effort put into aid sent to Lebanon. But, nothing.
Bible thumpers may say we are seeing Armageddon. They may say we are seeing the end times of the world. An hundred years from now, they will still be waiting. That’s just the way of things. In the mean time, will people learn to wear masks, to wash their hands, to not touch their faces, that history repeats itself, and that corruption and deregulation leads to great danger? Will they come to realize that national leaders and corporations have not their interests in mind, but their money.
We hang out on our little farm, leaving as little as possible these days. For me, someone who is interested in a deeper understanding of how people lived an hundred years and more ago, this is a bit of an opportunity to experience something a little more like it. It’s not Armageddon. It is a deeper understanding of our place in history by living in it. We are witnesses to history. But in this moment, our fingerprints are all over it.