Flee, Fools!
Ben Samuels, 23’
Climate change threatens not only our way of life but our very existence. Some estimates give us a matter of decades.
The rising tide of totalitarian fascism populism is threatening the entire world liberal order. American democracy was hijacked by a full-on demagogue four years ago.
But my apologies: we should not even speak of the world liberal order nor American “democracy” with such reverence. They are systems fundamentally built on the marginalization and oppression of the groups that do not fit into their often prejudiced agenda, not to mention that the Jewish faith predicts an apocalyptic war between Gog/Magog and the Jewish Lord in the next 200 years or so.
Here’s the truth, and I’m not sorry if it offends anyone: the Western order on which the whole global system is predicated is rotten to its core with the sicknesses of racism and other-ing. The Enlightenment project, though maybe justifiable in the beginning, has become nothing more than an instrument of segregation and oppression. All the while, our destructive environmental policies will mean the conversion of our Earth into a burning hellscape within the century. But you know all this.
People, this is real shit. We’re only beginning to understand just how hopeless our predicament is between the demagoguery, demons, Gog-uery, racism, xenophobia, and environmental degradation. Read any publication, Bard-based or otherwise, and you will get it. It has been the burden of the human race for a millennia. Perhaps we, with our uncountable, ineradicable prejudices, can turn back the hands of fate; however, I think not. I think that anyone with half a brain and any desire for a good life for their children should immediately begin saving for a nuclear-resistant bunker or a seat on a rocket ship.
It is a lot of money, and a big life step, understandably, but are we not all aware of the fate that we will soon suffer in this dying planet? We have pumped Co2 and methane into our atmosphere too long and ignored too many warnings. We have fought; now we should flee.
What fleeing looks like, I am not sure. Bunkering is the obvious answer, and space travel may soon be an option. Tunneling, as the mole rats do, is not out of the picture. Yet, what is clear to any rational person is that our situation is clearly unsustainable.
Jewish tradition is very clear about what will happen to us. Just because we are a minority does not mean that our voice does not deserve to be listened to and applied to your life. It is the year 5781 in the Jewish calendar. Moshiach, the messiah, will arrive before 6000. Before 6000 there will be the apocalyptic invasion of Gog and Magog. You are absolutely right: afterwards, the dead will be resurrected and we will be in the age of the messiah. But in the meantime, G and M will wreak unspeakable carnage, probably under acid rain and a sky thick with industrial smog. From the unquestionable texts of Jewish Kabbalah and scientific proof, we know these things will come to pass. We must flee the earth as we know it.
It seems drastic, but I am dead serious. Will you grow up, live a normal life, and abandon your grandchildren to the horrific fate we accept as our future? You know perfectly well -- you have been told enough times -- that the world will burn within the next century. You are a fool to fight that kind of inevitability. And yet, because of your lack of imagination, and through the same inertia which has condemned our world to environmental destruction, you are about to condemn your progeny to the same fate. Your compost will not still be the unstoppable force of climate change, your pleas will not stay the iron swords of the legions of Magog, and your vote out of 300 million people will not save our deeply rotten American system. So why do we stay?