America’s endless apocalypse

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 19:00:00 +0000

Few of us can clearly make out the form of history until it is well behind us. That helps us understand why we still have not settled on a common name for the decade now receding behind us. How others will look back on this time is beyond our knowing or influence, of course, but future historians would do well to ascribe to our time a name that encapsulates not just the events of the past decade but the way in which we as Americans have come to view the world and our place within it. Such a name might be the Apocalyptic Decade or, perhaps, the Apocalyptic Era — for it is not over yet.

It was during the last decade, after all, that the belief in the end of the world leapt from the cultish into the mainstream of American society. Ours is an era bookended by the widespread belief in the impending collapse of society: at one end we had Y2K, the largest and most expensive mass preparation for a secular apocalypse in the history of the world; at the other end we have the growing expectation and belief that December 21, 2012 — the supposed end date of the ancient Mayan Long Count calendar — will herald either a radically transformative or utterly cataclysmic global event. Between these two bookends are pages upon pages of apocalyptic anxiety, a decade-plus-long collection that tells the tale of an America that has grown very afraid of the future.

Salon.com > Matthew Barrett Gross

America’s endless apocalypse