Headline, May 12 2026/ APOCALYPSE : ''' DIE HARD DIP '''

APOCALYPSE : 

''' DIE HARD DIP '''

! OVERTAKING ! : IN THE WORST OF TIMES - not so very long ago. I had my laptop stolen. My laptop : relic, huge and heavy and wide, with a dead battery. Post trauma, I mourned this great companion and still do all the time.

Then, a few days back, traveling on a public transport, I stepped out to help an old, heavy, village lady reeking in poverty, get off at the hospital stop. For a minute or so, I lost situational awareness.

My cell phone was in my shalwar's [ trousers ] inner pocket with a zipper covered and shrouded by Kamiz [ long shirt ]. I discovered the loss somewhat 10 minutes later. 

I tried my number. It rang right through every time for 3 hours. It was switched off about two hours later. The Call Center had no '' Trace-Stolen-Lost-Found '' facilities.

But this good lad at the Call Center seemed to know me, and politely murmured to me : '' Professional Work, '' as he glanced through the history on his screen.

APOCALYPSE THINKING HITS THE WORLD STREAM : Many, many believe that ' end times ' are coming. What the hell started that idea? I think Lauren Jackson spins the tale.

I grew up on a cul-de-sac in Arkansas, in a suburban house with a basketball hoop, a trampoline and a few years' worth of food stored in the garage.

My parents built industrial shelves and lined them with gleaming canisters of freeze-dried potatoes and green beans, boxes of stabilized milk, and Ziplocs of beef jerky. They also shared hundreds of pouches of mac and cheese for me, the family's pickiest eater.

My parents believed that the apocalypse loomed. They weren't alone. About 40 percent of Americans said in a 2022 poll that we are living in the ''end times.''

For much of the country, it's an idea that's almost mundane. The rupture is spliced into their Sunday sermons and enchants their world with a fearsome possibility.

I'd hear bad news on television as a kid and think, is this it? Has the time come? It's an idea that's bouncing around at the highest level of the U.S. government.

The Trump administration has framed its campaign in Iran as a biblically prophesied holy war. Paula White Cain, the head of the White House Faith Office, asked PM Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel whether the conflict was a sign of the '' End of Days.''

That's also the title of a new book by Chris Jennings, a journalist who used to work in The New Yorker. The book looks back at Ruby Ridge, the violent 1990s standoff between federal law enforcement and a survivalist family in Idaho.

It also seeks to explain the emergence of apocalyptic rhetoric in the United States, and how it has changed modern conspiracies like QAnon.

Ruby Ridge, Jennings writes, portended '' a slow-moving ontological crack up, the fracturing of American reality itself.'' I am fascinated by that, so I asked him how apocalyptic thinking became so prevalent and potent in American life.

' Lauren : Your first book was about an early American pursuit of utopia, and your second was about a modern American embrace of apocalyptic fear. Do those come from the same impulse? '

'' CHRIS '' : Yeah, I would see them as two sides of the same coin. Both of them have the effect of reorienting your whole relationship to the material world and to your fellow citizens.

If you think the world's on the brink of perfection, it inspires a certain set of mostly positive impulses.

But if you think that the world is on the brink of calamity, that makes you a very different type of citizen. ''

" You write that it makes modern life into a sci-fi thriller. ''

'' It re-enchants the news in a way that I think is dangerous and interesting. American foreign policy is suddenly infused with prophetic elements.

What's a reasonable rational relationship with Iran or with Israel? All of that can be set aside if it is plugged into the web of prophecy ''

' U.S. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and others are invoking apocalyptic thinking in describing the war in Iran. What is the implication of that ? '

'' When Hegseth frames that in apocalyptic terms, for people who read books like '' Left Behind '' as teenagers / students the connection is immediate. It's hooking something very real - bombs, death, civilians, war - to a fantasy.

It would be just as wild to be interpreting American foreign affairs through the lens of the '' Die Hard '' movies or the Iliad.

The Honour and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on The World, Students, Conspiracies and Books continues. The World Students Society thanks Lauren Jackson.

With respectful dedication to the Global Founder Framers of !WOW! - the exclusive and eternal ownership of every student in the world and then Leaders, Parents, Professors and Teachers.

See You all prepare for the Great '' Constitutional Democratic Convention '' on !WOW! : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter X !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - The Voice Of The Voiceless