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More Turtle Talk

On the cover of Newsweek
It is quite one thing to be alive in the year 13 A.D., and to believe that the end of the world will happen very soon, and quite another to be alive in the year 2013, and to believe that the world will end very soon.  In the year 13, in the Middle East, it was commonly understood--at least by some Semitic people--that the end times were near.  Good and Evil were at war.  God was in his heaven, and Satan was in his pit.  That was 2000 years ago.

 Jesus believed that he was a prophet of the end times, and that God was finally going to triumph over Evil, and the Roman Empire, and ghosties and ghoulies and three-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night (to quote the fine, old Book of Common Prayer).  He thundered against the money changers in the Temple, and called for repentence and a change of heart.

 It is a little absurd to continue to believe just exactly that for 2000 years, but there are people who say the same thing today:  "The end is near!  Repent!  God is about to appear on a cloud!  Evil will resist but lose in a last, bloody, battle with those of Good Heart and Better Weapons!  Finally!

People used to sell what they owned, put the cash in their pockets, and gather at sunrise on the mountain to watch the sun rise on the Last Days.  Today, they join the Tea Party and run for Congress.  "This way," Michele Bachmann calls out to them.  "This way!"
"You heard what she said!", Pat Robertson broadcasts.  "Put the cash in your pockets, and follow Michele!  Or me!"

In the year 13, or 33, that was just the way people understood their world:  God up there, Satan down there, us here, Caesar in Rome, and keep your eye on the clouds!"

Today, that is madness:  pure and simple madness.  It is madness to elect people who think the world is going to end very soon now, and then expect them to think sanely about anything that has a future.  Do you really think that Michele Bachmann gives a diddly-damn about global climate change?  Why should she?  God is in his heaven, and women are in their place.

Lest you suspect that I exaggerate, Michele Bachmann is saying, publicly, right now, that we are living in the End Times, and that all this insanity in politics, and all these wars and rumors of wars, and maybe all these bedbugs in the hotel room, are just signs of the End Times we live in.

Oh, dear God!  All these brains and no one to use them!  Turtle Talk!  Turtles all the way down.  

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