I have a romantic fascination with the end times and when I
say romantic, I do not mean I like the prospect. In fact, I do not want to live in a
post-apocalyptic world. Only a
delusional fool would want to.
October 16th, season 5 of the Walking Dead
premiers and I will be glued to the tube to watch what Rick does to prove that
they “Don’t know who they are fooling with!”
I have a very personal interest in this series, as I went to school for
2 plus years just north of where the story takes place in Atlanta, Georgia,
land of kudzu and red clay. It brings
back a lot of memories, except the zombie part, of course.
The end times… the Biblical term associated with Christians
vanishing, the aftermath, and the Book of Revelation. Not to ruffle feathers, or get into a war of
what is going to actually happen, I swerve hard and go into the world of
fiction – which incidentally can be manipulated at will or speculated to – to death. This is the world I fantasize over and the
one I am directing this column towards, so relax. There’s even a little levity thrown in.
I want to go on record and state firmly that I like my
conditioned air, my electricity, my fast Internet connection, etcetera,
etcetera. I prepare for anarchy, but
never want to actually live it. I like
to sweat at the gym and the hiking trails, but I abhor sleeping, well, sticky. I did that for 2 years in Southeast
Asia. I like eating when I want to, but learned after Hurricane
Ike that MRE’s can be quite tasty.
Living minute by minute and watching your back with a loaded
AR-15 is really exciting on TV, but in real life? Nightmarish.
Can you imagine pulling into the Donut Wheel on Garth Road to get your morning boudin
kolaches and seeing a bombed out store front?
Horrors! Not to mention, the kind
and friendly proprietor would most likely be, well, he would be absent or even
ghoulish in appearance?
One reason I love watching the Walking Dead is the zombie arch
villain could be replaced with anything from the weather to an alien attack and
it would still depict anarchy and be an accurate depiction of how it would be
if the government could not maintain law and order. It could even be an Ebola outbreak…
However, the criminal element is always involved regardless
and the one I fear the most likely antagonist we will encounter in a time of
anarchy.
Regardless of who the booger man is, the criminal element
will always prey upon society. It
happened in New Orleans
when Hurricane Katrina hit the city and this element was portrayed as victims
for the most part. Most could have left,
but stayed to exploit vacant city. It
happened in Ferguson, Missouri also. The criminal element turned a peaceful rally
into something the local police could not contain.
We live in a real world where actual fanatics believe they
will be welcomed into the bosom of Abraham for killing people who do not
believe or practice their peculiar brand of twisted and perverse dogma. They erroneously believe they will be
rewarded with 70 very dead, but chaste young girls if they die in battle with
the name of their god on their lips. It
sounds like something from an Stephen King novel and just as preposterous. 70 dead girls; now that is some reward. It doesn’t add up any more than a dead zombie
walking around biting a living human for a hot meal. It’s impure horror/fantasy fiction. This 70 virgin reward is the greatest lie and
astoundingly more people are signing on every day.
In a country where we believe in tolerating other religions,
this particular one for the most part is lying low and to many of us, this is a
clear sign of complicity. I would love –
love to see a mass movement in this country of said religion openly condemning
these fanatics. I’m not holding my
breath though. According to some
“experts” at least one third of the practitioners in this country actually
agree with the radicals. They choose to
remain quiet, much like the mutants in the Walking Dead. This causes many of us to watch them with
suspicion.
To me and many other Americans, they are nothing more than
flesh-eating zombies, at least until they come alive and condemn this aberrant
and devilish behavior toward other religions and the American way of life in
particular.
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No, I do not want to see America brought to its knees by
religious zealots, Ebola, bad White House planning, or... yikes, zombies. I want to see it prosper. I want to wave at a cop knowing they have my
back. I want to eat at the local
taqueria or juicy hamburg joint and sit in my air conditioned abode and watch
make believe zombies get slain by desperate American fighters on the tube with
my doggies curled up next to me, but there’s always that danged criminal
element to watch for and thus, I will continue to prepare for the… end times.