As We Know It

My friend Ed called me today and asked, "Do you think it's the end of the world?" My response to his question was, "It's the end of the world as we know it." Now, I know that there is a cute REM song that uses this as a title and repeating lyric that turns out just fine. But here, off the MTV screen, life doesn't work like that.

Ed said, "Well, my aunt,” his aunt being a rather stern Pentecostal church-going senior lady, “says that it's the end of the world."

"Ah!" I responded. "She's talking about Armageddon. Well, I suppose the world is in some sort of battle between good and evil. But I don't think it's the end times. Just the end of the world as we know it.

"You must 'splain,' uself, Lucy."

"OK, here's why it's the end of the world as we know it."

It was unimaginable until recently that any president would start an unprovoked war. We are currently engaged in a war for no politically viable reason, attacking people who did not attack us. We've been fighting that war for 10 years, sacrificing the lives of our youth and those of many innocent Afghans civilians for 10 years. It's the end of the definition of war as we know it.

It was beyond our wildest imaginings that any presidential candidate would boast of the benefits of separating church and state, or would state succinctly that multicultural America must be celebrated as only a Christian nation. We now have two candidates who find this viewpoint reasonable. While political candidates have always expressed their religious views, those views related to personal faith and their prayers were to that God would bless our entire secular nation. No longer. Thomas Jefferson's 1802 Letter to the Danbury Baptists be damned. It's the end of the "wall of separation of church and state" as we know it.

While it is a perfectly fine demonstration of our First Amendment rights to yell our discontents about or disdain for government from outside capital walls, it borders on anarchy to become an elected official with the goal of destroying government from the inside. [Let’s come with hours of a default because it we’re being lied to about how the market is going to react.Let’s sign a pledge never to raise taxes (even though we’ve taken a pledge to protect the government and the US Constitution).Let’s blame the poor for their plight.Let’s protect the rich at all costs. Let’s rewrite history – it’s good that blacks were slaves.It brought them to America.The Founding Fathers fought hard against the institution of slavery (that was so good for the slaves?)]. Extremist, anarchist governance by the few.Poor us.And poor me. I, who love tea parties, have not hosted on in a year.The phrase has lost its elegant connotation. It surely won’t show up first on a Google search.It’s the end of our political structure as we know it.

There has always been in politics a politics a partisan divide. But, as in law, there has been an unspoken rule that, following debates and legislative votes, you shake hands and come out friends.Compromise is not a dirty word.Bipartisan means that everyone gives something up and works to make a decent bill.Nothing is personal.Certainly no one would ever think to yell crudely at the President from the well of Congress. There is now such a culture of contention that we have lost respect in the world, our credit rating, our minds. It’s the end of civility in political discourse as we know it.

It was absolutely unthinkable that we would have a black President of the United States in many of our lifetimes.Many of us counted it so hopeful and exciting when Barack Obama was elected.But now, we cannot even remember the euphoria of his election, the crowds swelling the Mall on that beautiful day, and the world that was with us.There were whites that saw in Obama a threat to their well-being, who viewed him as a symbol of the encroaching darkening of America.For them, there was and is only fear.It is the end of the dominance of whites as the majority ethnicity in America; in some states this has already occurred. Nationally, 2015 is the tipping point. Fearful people exercised their Second Amendment rights with a vengeance.He was depicted as an ape, a bushman, a tar baby and Hitler.Obama’s birth certificate was doubted, creating a political category, called Birthers, whose sole aim was to prove that he was un-American.Obama was called outrageous and unthinkable names.Normally, differences with presidents are over policy, not their ethnicity or race. While other presidents may have been disliked, distrusted or even disdained, no one has ever accused them of being foreign, inhuman, or un-American. No one has believed them to be illegitimate heirs to the pinnacle of American power.They have only been of significantly different political viewpoints.It is the end of respect for the Office of the President as we know it.

We always thought that if we had a job we’d live a comfortable life.We never imagined that our mortgages would become hockey pucks for banks, that our 401k’s would be gambled by investment companies, that governors would bust our unions, that our Social Security would be in jeopardy, and that our health care needs may not be met.Our children will not have better lives than we had. They, like us, may live hand to mouth, broke and busted, staying too long with relatives.They may work at jobs for which they have too much training.Or they may never be able to receive the education that they dreamed of because they cannot afford it.Programs that may help us don’t exist.It is the end of access to the American dream as we know it.

We never thought we'd see so many floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis and other terrible disasters happening one after the other, devastating states and countries. We also never imagined the outpouring of human kindness that, each time, came to the rescue of those affected. It's the end of the ecosystem as we know it.

So when Ed asked me if it’s the end of the world as we know it, that was my response.No, I don’t think it’s Armaggedon.I don’t think we’ll fall off the edge of the world into a fiery abyss. I know that Americans are a resilient and hopeful people and believe strongly that right wins in the end. Though the end can sometimes be a while away. I fear that we have been drive so far apart that we cannot see each other clearly anymore. But, hopefully soon. So while REM provides a summery soundtrack to our distraction, the sentiment isn’t entirely right - It’s the end of the world as we know, and I’m NOT fine.