Apocalypse Now

I hate to repeat myself, but the news is repeating itself so loudly that I feel compelled to follow suit.

Today’s post was going to be about something else entirely. Something funny and nostalgic. But both ongoing and very recent events have overwhelmed my ability and desire to amuse, and looking back in time is too difficult when the horrors of the present and the future feel so inescapable.

So, I’m afraid you’re about to read, not for the first time on this blog, about my outraged resignation over the madness of American’s gun culture. And also, even more cheerily, we’ll revisit my conviction that the planet is in an inexorable downward spiral. One that makes me glad I’m nearing 60 and may not—hopefully will not—live to experience the worst of it.

What’s that? You’re thinking, “The guy posts nothing for nearly two months, only to climb back onto this nihilistic soapbox?!” You suddenly remembered something else you need to do right now, somewhere else you need to be?

I get that. I don’t blame you, if you’d rather not read on. On many days I can push the abundant signs of impending catastrophe far enough back in my brain to try to write entertainingly about the mundanities of my daily life or the absurd manifestations of pop culture. Maybe the next time opportunity and motivation coincide to place me at the keyboard, I’ll be in a lighter mood. Watch this space. Have a good day. Catch you later.

But, should you choose to keep reading, here’s what’s on my mind today.

My current mental clusterf*** began yesterday at work, when I checked my phone to see if I’d gotten any texts. (Not that I’m that popular, mind you. But, for example, Lynn sometimes writes to remind me to call my parents, or to pay a bill, or to do something else for which I seem to require backup memory.) I’d received no texts, but I had gotten an alert from the BBC that two members of an American TV news team had been shot and killed while on camera.

(A quick aside: Although I welcome the BBC’s interest in keeping me informed on world events, I continue to find it ironic that an overseas news service frequently provides my first word on all the horrible things that are happening in my own country. While I never asked for the Beeb’s updates, they started appearing on my phone when I downloaded the BBC news app. I sometimes wonder if it’s the Brits’ way of saying, “Hey, you were the ones who insisted on breaking from us and going your own way. Be careful what you wish for.”)

Anyway, back to that news item. It’s a huge international story already now, of course, just a day later. How an asshole maniac with a legally obtained gun and anger-management issues did what so many identically described Americans before him have done—killed innocent people just because he wanted to and could, given this country’s laughably toothless gun laws—but this time did it to a reporter and a videographer while they were covering a story live on camera. And then how the gunman proudly posted the video to his Facebook page. Already this morning there was a commentary in the Washington Post about how this is the New Face of Violence, in which homicidal narcissists share the glory of their bloodletting with all their imagined fans via social media.

I was thinking about this earlier this morning, driving home from a morning run in DC. My mind was all over the place, ranging from the practical to balancing social responsibility against personal safety.

The gunman in the Virginia killings had worn a body camera, posted the video to Facebook, and faxed to a news source a bitter, incoherent and self-contradictory manifesto. Wow, I thought. I don’t even know where you’d buy a body camera. I’m not on Facebook. I have no idea how to post video footage anywhere. Also, when’s the last time I sent a fax? What’s that procedure for that? Does all this mean I’m just a Luddite doofus, or that I’m, conversely, admirably ill-suited to conducting 21st-century terrorism?

But then I came back to what, if anything, I can do to fight gun violence, or at least to meaningfully voice my contempt for the status quo. As I’ve written before in this space, the National Rifle Association is so rich and powerful, and its grasp on the balls (or lady parts) of federal and state lawmakers so tight, as to make abundantly forlorn any hope of enacting significant restrictions on firearms purchases and use. It didn’t happen after Columbine, Virginia Tech, Charleston, you name the bloody tragedy. So why would it happen now? But what I’ve personally wanted to do for a long time is to slap a pro-gun control bumper sticker onto my car. Today, I am thinking my sticker should unambiguously state my true stance and read: “Repeal the Second Amendment!”

The arguments against doing so remain compelling, though. This is a nation of gun nuts— some of them less forgiving of even a little thing like a lone bumper sticker than are others. I frankly would expect my car to be vandalized were I to scratch this itch. I’d anticipate anything from keying the paint to smashing the windshield or shooting out a tire. I wouldn’t rule out violence against me, either, whether in the midst of a provoked argument or simply while pumping gas next to a highway that afforded my assailant a quick getaway.

See, this is why my admiration is boundless for the trailblazers, the whistle-blowers, the squeaky wheels in situations when making even the faintest of murmurs might constitute a death wish. I thank God (well, agnostically) for the likes of King, Gandhi, Mandela, Parks, Schindler, Jackie Robinson, and so many others who’ve helped institutionalize whatever fairness and justice exists in the world.

But as for me, hey, I’m just trying to stay alive. And to save my household from huge automotive repair costs at the least, and Lynn from widowhood at the worst.

Although, again, I hope to die before the plupart of the shit really hits the fan.

Which brings me to more happy news from the BBC.  As I was sitting in my car this morning—envisioning both the initial rush of receiving my defiant bumper sticker in the mail and my sheepish decision shortly thereafter to stick it in a drawer, so as not to place huge targets on my vehicle and forehead just to make a point—I heard a breaking story on my local public radio station’s broadcast of the BBC News Hour about the discovery in Austria of as many as 50 decomposing bodies in the back of a locked truck. They were thought to be Syrian refugees, who had fled unthinkable conditions in their own country only to be fatally victimized by human traffickers who had no regard or use for their clients once they’d gotten their money.

The BBC newsman was very effective at painting a picture with language: the unspeakable conditions inside the truck, the overpowering stench, the difficulty of rendering a quick and accurate body count with the bodily breakdowns so advanced and the assault on the senses so overwhelming. This, in turn, got me to thinking about the vastness of ongoing refugee crises in multiple corners of the globe—Africa and Asia as well as Europe.

Too many wars.  Too much human fallout. Too many conflicting government agendas for enough to get done to address the problems.

From there, the head begins to spin. At least mine does. The world’s population continues to grow exponentially, even as the climate steadily warms and finite resources such as water and fossil fuels keep being expended and alternative energy sources languish. California is parched. Wildfires rage throughout the western United States. Instances of mass starvation multiply around the world. Oh, and the threat of nuclear holocaust remain, too! We need Superman. We get Donald Trump. And it’s symptomatic of the way things are going—of the way reaction has replaced reason and candor trumps (pun intended) considered thought—that, to far too many people, the Donald Trumps of the world serve as superhero stand-ins.

So, yes, here I am today, repeating myself. America’s gun violence is insane—and inexorable. The Earth has survived external threats from wayward comets and all those UFOs people keep sighting, but it continues to implode from the damage done by its human inhabitants. I’m sorry to replay this broken record, but, let's face it, the song remains the same.

I’ll end with this. Last Sunday, I eagerly watched the initial episode of Fear the Walking Dead, a spinoff of and prequel to the TV series The Walking Dead, which I’ve been faithfully watching nearly since its inception a few years ago. Both shows are about a zombie apocalypse. But whereas the original series lurched into chaos that already was deeply in progress, the new series tracks the breakdown of society from the beginning, just as a lethal virus is spreading and the undead menace is quickly growing to the point of no return.

When it debuted, I saw the initial series as escapist fare. Scary, yes, but also reassuring, in that nothing going on in the real world was quite as bad as being relentlessly pursued by roving hordes of soulless cannibals. I’m watching this new series through different eyes, though, with a connective focus. In real life, the virus is aloft. There’s no cure in sight. Utter chaos appears inevitable, if on a longer timeline than that on TV.

Which is why sometimes, especially on days like today, I wonder if slapping a bumper sticker on my car that might get me killed really is such a bad idea. I mean, given what I might otherwise live to see.