My Welcome Wore Out Years Ago

I have a new batch of beef jerky in the dehydrator, and I just made macaroni and cheese using a new recipe. I also put a new laser/flashlight device on my AK-47. It’s an uneventful and peaceful day, which is odd, since it keeps looking more and more like the end of the age is here.

Yesterday I texted a few people I don’t hear from much. Two are former armorbearers from Trinity Church, the corrupt money-worshiping establishment I attended for about 4 years. One said he was looking for an AR-15; I don’t think he understands that he can’t wait around. The other just bought a C308, which is a knockoff of the Heckler & Koch G3, a 7.62x51mm semiauto sort of like an AR10. These guys live in Broward County, which is the county where Fort Lauderdale is located. We don’t communicate often, so it’s not like we’re conspiring to amass firearms and ammunition. It’s a grassroots thing, which means it’s probably supernatural.

I keep thinking of On the Beach, a 1959 film featuring Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner. The story goes like this: there has been a nuclear war. There is a deadly layer of fallout suspended in the atmosphere, and it has sterilized entire continents. Because most of the explosions took place above the equator, the radiation is confined there temporarily. People still live normally in the Southern Hemisphere, but they expect to die like everyone else. The only question is how long it will take the fallout to move south.

Gregory Peck plays a married submarine captain. Ava Gardner plays a single American woman who lives in Australia. Peck takes his boat to Australia, where he and his crew work together with the Australian government. There is some doubt as to whether the fallout has completely exterminated the human race above the equator.

The movie’s characters don’t stop living just because they believe there is no hope. They avoid thinking about their destiny. They continue raising families and doing their jobs. They have parties. A character played by Fred Astaire restores a used race car and competes in it. Old men at a private club discuss the best way to make sure they waste as little as possible of the club’s wine collection. People try to make the most of life, but at the same time, the government distributes suicide pills intended to help citizens avoid dying slowly from radiation sickness.

Isn’t this a lot like our situation? It’s as if the sentence has been pronounced and we’re just waiting for the walk to the gallows.

The big difference between our current predicament and the one depicted in On the Beach is that only one group of modern people is headed for disaster: those who aren’t close to God. A much smaller group expects deliverance and relief. We actually look forward to the end.

It’s yet another illustration of the fact that we live in different realities. The children of darkness dislike God and morality, they think 2020 is a disaster, and they’re worried and afraid. The children of light cling to God and feel grateful for the way he has prepared them. They see 2020 as a time to prepare for something beautiful. They look forward to dropping their earthly problems and being transported to heaven in perfect, youthful bodies.

I’m having a pleasant day, thinking about things like macaroni and cheese and beef jerky, but all over America, people are stewing in resentment and fear, plotting violence and theft. I’m not worried about getting sick. I’m not wondering if I can pay the rent. My head isn’t full of demonic fantasies about horrific oppression under a second Trump administration. I’m making reasonable efforts to prepare to defend myself if someone brings violence to me, but I don’t feel like hurting anyone. I don’t blame other people for my problems. I don’t think people of another race have stolen all the land and money. I don’t believe Jews run the world and need to be dealt with. I don’t think taking up arms and cleansing the world of people who disagree with me is a smart idea.

My religion tells me God will do any cleansing that has to be done.

With the passing of every week, it looks more like the things people like me have been expecting are really happening. America is becoming like a violent banana republic. Even leftists are talking about civil war. Signs of the rapture keep accumulating.

I suppose it’s always hard to believe it when you find yourself witnessing historical events of extreme impact. Noah’s friends must have been stunned when water started falling from the sky for the first time, just as Noah had predicted. The disciples must have been amazed to learn that Jesus really had risen. But extraordinary things do happen, and when they happen, people do witness them. Someone has to be be there. There is no reason why it can’t be us. Just because life has been very different all our lives doesn’t mean we can’t witness a world transformed by a blizzard of obvious supernatural events.

People are behaving as though what we’re seeing were a momentary aberration to be followed by a return to life as it was in 2019. They get engaged, build houses, and start businesses. They buy stocks and other investments in hopes of long-term gains. Businesses send out email ads trying to sell us things we may not be able to use for very long. We plant trees we know take several years to start bearing. Vintners are putting up bottles of wine they know won’t be ready for at least 10 years. High school seniors started 4-year colleges this fall. But how much of it will pay off? What good is it to give someone a 5-year car loan today if the tribulation will be howling around both of you in November of 2021?

I have a tenant who wants a 3-year lease. I refused to do it because some people who think they hear from God are predicting extreme inflation for next year. I don’t want to be locked into x dollars per month if the market rate will be 5x in two years. I think I should have been more flexible. If the tribulation is about to start, I won’t be here to worry about inflation.

More and more, I feel that it doesn’t matter what I do to safeguard my future. I see things I want, and I think, “I shouldn’t spend the money.” Then I think, “It makes no difference at all. Go ahead.” I’m not thinking about investing. I have no interest in cancer screenings. I just can’t believe I’m going to be here very long.

I thought about writing a will, but then I thought this: most people I would want to leave wealth to are going to go in the rapture. Do I really care which child of the devil gets my property? It will be a curse to that person, regardless of who it is. Does a butterfly worry about what happens to its chrysalis?

If the end of the age is really here, terrorist rioting will increase and become as bad as it can possibly be. Conservatives may finally start taking part as aggressors, not victims. It will be part of normal life. Major wars will start. Diseases that make coronavirus look like chickenpox will cover the globe. People won’t just lack toilet paper and Lysol wipes. They’ll lack bread, canned goods, grain, and produce. They’ll eat rats, squirrels, crows, pigeons, and songbirds. They’ll eat their own pets. They’ll butcher zoo animals, like they did in Venezuela. They’ll go to parks to kill ducks and swans. They’ll trap ants for food.

I walk across parking lots now to get into stores, and I see scenes from disaster movies. I see people wearing masks. I see markers on the pavement and sidewalks, telling people where to stand. I hear creepy, insincerely cheerful recorded female voices reminding us to be nice because we’re all in this together. It’s like HAL 9000 had daughters.

The voices are always female, because psychologists who advise businesses say female voices will comfort us and not make us feel bullied or challenged. How do I know that? I know it because I’m old and smart. I don’t have to check.

Coronavirus is not a big deal, but we’re already living as though the plagues were here. God is showing us two things: diseases we can’t beat can happen, and when they do, we will respond irrationally, making things much worse than they have to be.

Coronavirus is a mild disease which appears to be vulnerable to vaccines, but what if it were like AIDS? There is no reason we can’t have a fatal airborne disease that can’t be cured and won’t let us create vaccines. It looks like coronavirus doesn’t produce symptoms in most people. There have been infectious diseases that killed the majority of their victims even with treatment, and some of those diseases are still active. They haven’t done the damage they could have because they were contained or because they’re not easy to transmit, but there is no law that says an infectious disease can’t be untreatable, unpreventable, and easily transmitted.

Imagine what America would be like if we had a real plague. What if we had an incurable disease with a 50% mortality rate, with no hope of finding a vaccine? If 200,000 deaths confined almost exclusively to people who were likely to die anyway have driven us to hoard and tyrannize, think what a real plague would do to us.

How quick we have been to give up our humanity. I’ve been taking ludicrous continuing legal education courses, and I’m required to get several hours of training in the area of technology. It’s amazing to hear the speakers talk about Zoom and cloud computing. They say many firms have discovered they make more money by staying home and avoiding nearly all in-person encounters. Our noses have been rubbed in the fact that remote communication isn’t more expensive; it’s cheaper and more efficient.

If it’s true in law, it’s true for many other businesses. It means we’re not going back to normal interaction even if coronavirus disappears. Unless there is a compelling reason for you to be among other people, it’s not going to happen. We’re making ourselves a nation of shut-ins, deliberately. It’s like we’re all turning into gamers, living on Cheetos and satisfying our need for socialization by spewing hate on 4chan.

It doesn’t take much of a threat to turn us into willing matrix residents. Our homes are turning into wombs, with ethernet-cable umbilical cords and Amazon Prime bloodstreams.

Maybe the only mentally healthy people in the future will be those whose jobs have physical components, like using shovels and handing people bags of hamburgers. If you don’t have to shower and go to work to make a living, you may have to start forcing yourself to get together with people in order to get your RDA of human contact.

The human race has a natural tendency to use technology to minimize contact. I don’t think we understood that 30 years ago, but it’s obvious now, and our overblown pandemic has exacerbated this pathological inclination.

I guess I’m off on a tangent. To get back to the subject, I know we are in a unique era unlike all previous human crises, and very few of us realize it. It makes sense that the end of the age should come now, because there doesn’t seem to be any way for us to continue as we are. I hate to use one of the left’s favorite manipulative words, but our situation is unsustainable.

I don’t know whether my impressions are right or not, but it doesn’t matter, because we’ll know by the end of the year. If coronavirus is under control, terrorist riots have stopped, and people have forgotten all about civil war, then my impressions will have been proven wrong. If I’m right, things will be much worse than they are now, and the trend will be downward.

I will not stop praying for the rapture. The quality of life for American Christians is no longer acceptable, so I would like to go home with my brothers and sisters. Even though I have peace, prosperity, good health, and fun things to do, I don’t want to hang around in a world where there is no major Christian nation left.

This must be how Jews felt before 1948.

It must seem strange to pray for the end when my life is so pleasant, but the one who makes it pleasant showed me there is a much better place.

One longs for a world in which his kind is mainstream. I think that’s understandable. If there were a movie-style matrix, then Neo would want to unplug at the end of the day and enjoy the company of other people who lived in the real world. He wouldn’t want to live forever in a place where no one understood reality or him. For me, it’s like living in Miami, where half the population can’t speak English because they have no gratitude. I used to have to use hand signals and do pantomime in order to make people understand me. Getting a haircut or ordering a meal could be a tiresome process. It’s nice to be in a place where people understand me without a lot of striving.

I don’t know what’s happening with the pandemic. If a real second wave comes, or just seems to come, I may need to get out and buy more paper towels and toilet paper. I suppose more frozen meat couldn’t hurt. Apart from these possible concerns, I don’t foresee any other practical issues.

That’s all I have. I should sign off and spend time in prayer. If things pan out the way I expect, I hope neither you nor I are here to witness it.