I’m one of those people who cheers up in catastrophes.  Earthquakes, wild fires and hurricanes turn me on. 

Doctors call it a form of paraphilia, a condition where you’re inflamed erotically by accidents or disasters. 

I’m not excited sexually by catastrophe just get high and feel cleansed and purged afterward

 

Who in their right mind can be cheerful in our current catastrophes of mass shootings, teenage suicide bombers,

civil wars, global warming and Trump’s cursing America as “death, destruction and weakness”?  Bring it on, God!

 

I sincerely admire the serenity of born-again evangelicals who eagerly look forward to the Apocalypse most of

us fear because they’re convinced that on the Second Coming of Jesus the chosen will leave the earth and

“meet the Lord in the air” in a mystical union with God, and the rest of us will be “left behind”, the title

of a best selling Christian series about the Tribulation. 

 

This looking-forward-happily-to-mass-extermination is dug deep into our national culture.  An example:

near Amarillo, Texas is Pantex, America’s only nuclear bomb final assembly plant.  A while back author

A.G. Mojtabai talked to many Pantex workers and found that their doom-laden religious thinking

accommodates a nuclear Armageddon because it’s consistent with the Bible.  Between coffee and

lunch break you build The Bomb and cheerily await your own inevitable extinction.

 

Just yesterday armed men wearing body armor tried robbing a Lexington, Kentucky Walmart to get money

for the apocalyptic end of days.

 

Such ``End-Time thinking``, long familiar to fundamentalists, is now mainstream entertainment. 

Look at the box office receipts of mass-market dystopian movies and books like Hunger Games,

the Divergent series, District 9 and whichever grim survivalist thingo catches the young public eye. 

 

It’s not nutty because there’s plenty of evidence that we’re all looking at the Abyss.  Ice cap warming,

nuclear stockpiles, religious wars, Flint-and-other-cities’ poisoned drinking water, toxic algae creeping

up on us from the watery depths like Black Lagoon creatures – bring on Rapture’s divine rescue. 

 

We live on a knife edge, yes? 

 

I’m glad to be neurotic because there’s never a shortage of bad stuff.  I read a lot of lefties and radical dissidents

whose words often seem stitched in Doomsday.  I email and phone friends and comrades, “Hey, buddy, hey girl,

cheer up!” which of course flies in the face of our experience. 

 

Looney Tunes cartoons is my own Scripture.  I take more inspiration from cheeky Bugs Bunny (“What’s up, Doc?”)

than with sadly logical Joe Btfsplk, artist Al Capp’s character in Lil Abner with a small dark cloud hovering over

his head who brings misfortune to himself and others.  Invented around World War 2, with casualties mounting

and Hitler on a winning streak, Bugs was a lot better for morale than glum Joe Btfsplk.

 

Of course, irrational optimism can be a symptom of clinical madness. So let’s look for a little evidence. 

The Cubs are in first place, the Koch Brothers won’t give $$ to Trump, a man jumped out of a plane at

25,0000 feet without a parachute and happily bounced into his wife’s arms, evolutionary biologists

may or may not have solved the mystery of the female orgasm, and the US Navy just named a

ship for Harvey Milk. “Eppur si muove”, as Galileo is supposed to have said.

                                            

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