Monday, December 26, 2011

2012 – A Fear of Things to Come

As I sit here, blogging for the first time in weeks, I find myself admitting why I have been neglecting my literary proclivities. The year is drawing to a close and I am irrefutably petrified of what 2012 will bring. Be it political, pop-cultural or miscellaneous, I am scared shitless. And justifiably so. 

Will Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney be our next president? Either possibility is equally terrifying. Or maybe Sarah Palin will jump in late in the race, put lipstick on this pig of a Republican field and pull off the political upset of the century. Would that be better or worse than four years of Mormon jokes? Hard to say.

If Obama wins, what will his second term look like? Will he become the messiah we all thought he would be or at the very least grow a stronger backbone when dealing with Republican recalcitrance? Will his Health Care bill stand up in the Supreme Court? Or will the ruling passed down by a Roberts-led court serve as another spanking to an American populace that re-elected George W. Bush?  

Will the Democrats re-take the House or will things stay more or less the same with obstructionism and gridlock running rampant on Capital Hill? Can a recession-riddled middle class survive the latter? And can I fucking stomach it? Will John Boehner be stricken with a fatal case of bird, swine or goat flu? If not, does that serve as sufficient evidence that there is no God?

Are you there God? It's me Michael.
And speaking of God, will the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva finally succeed in locating evidence of the elusive God Particle, a.k.a. the Higgs Boson? And if it does, will that prove that God is not a man who lives in the sky and controls all our fates but is in fact merely a subatomic particle with a mass of roughly 121 billion electron volts that can only be measured, let alone worshipped, within the confines of a six billion dollar particle accelerator?

A scientific discovery of this magnitude would send shockwaves through the Vatican that would reverberate in the Bible Belt but would they be substantial enough to divert Newt Gingrinch from his crusade to unify, NOT SEPARATE, church and state? You know how immune to science and facts those damn God-mongers can be…especially when they are pandering to the Tea Party voting block.    

Will the Knicks somehow put together a complete roster to go along with their formidable frontcourt and can they accomplish the unthinkable by actually bringing an NBA championship to New York in my lifetime? If so, I might consider that to be evidence of a higher power, regardless of what the physicists in Geneva discover.

And why is God on my mind so much to begin with? Is it because Rick, Mitt and Newt are duking it out to see who can appear the godliest to cater to a right-wing base that would never vote for that Muslim black guy in the Oval Office anyway?

Or is it because in this economy, many on both sides of the aisle are saying that it would take a miracle for Obama to be re-elected. And even though I don’t believe in miracles, in this case I really want to.

And there are so many other unknowns that lie ahead.

Will America get its fiscal house in order? Doubtful.

Will Europe? Possibly.

Will I recover from the end of the Oprah Winfrey Show? No.

Will I recover from the cancellation of Lopez Tonight? Probably.

Will America complete its withdrawal from Iraq? Or will conditions destabilize and force the Joint Chiefs to rethink their strategy? Will Pakistan finally end this dysfunctional love triangle with Washington and the Taliban and choose once and for all who they want to commit to? Probably not. So does that mean that bombs will fall and predator drones will soar? I don’t know. But like I said, I’m quite scared.

In 2012, what is more likely…that Egypt will build a healthy democracy? Or that Simon Cowell will get assassinated by an X-Factor reject? My money is on a Cowell obituary. And while we’re on the topic of newspapers, which would get more headlines? A Kardashian wedding or a Kashmir genocide? It makes me furious that I am actually asking these questions and more so, anxious that I can’t answer them.

Iran appears to be buckling under the latest batch of sanctions. Will that deter their nuclear shenanigans or just piss Ahmadinejad off enough to do something terrible? 


I don’t know and part of me doesn’t care because he’s just so goddamn adorable! I know he’s a fascist who denied that the Holocaust ever happened but look at him! Don’t you just wanna cuddle up with him on a rainy afternoon and watch Lifetime Channel movies?



Will Tim Tebow finally admit that he and Jesus Christ are one and the same?

Will Casey Anthony admit that she and the Antichrist are one and the same?

What will happen in 2012?

Will these questions ever cease?

I guess we’ll find out soon enough. But whatever happens, always remember to ask questions. Happy Holidays y’all.