Responding to the End of the World
- Mike Dickey
- Jun 13, 2025
- 4 min read
That's great, it starts with an earthquake
Birds and snakes, and aeroplanes
And Lenny Bruce is not afraid
Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn
World serves its own needs
Don't mis-serve your own needs
Speed it up a notch, speed, grunt, no, strength
The ladder starts to clatter
With a fear of height, down, height
Wire in a fire, represent the seven games
And a government for hire and a combat site
Left her, wasn't coming in a hurry
With the Furies breathing down your neck
Team by team, reporters baffled, trumped, tethered, cropped
Look at that low plane, fine, then
Uh oh, overflow, population, common group
But it'll do, save yourself, serve yourself
World serves its own needs, listen to your heart bleed
Tell me with the Rapture and the reverent in the right, right
You vitriolic, patriotic, slam fight, bright light
Feeling pretty psyched
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine
-R.E.M., It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I feel fine)
Sometimes I feel like I'm living in some horrible version of the Truman Show, one that doesn't end happily for the main character.
Yep. Sort of like that.
I mean, what in the pluperfect hell is going on right now?
A United States Senator forced face down onto the carpet by federal goons and handcuffed, for trying to ask ICE Barbie a question right after she declared the Trump Administration was taking over California from the "socialists".
Not sure what was worse, the brutal use of force or one of my longtime Air Force buddies justifying the whole thing by saying he "charged" the poor public servant at the lectern. As I've said before, you can't have MAGA friends anymore.
Of course, the justification of "he's coming right for us" makes me smirk a little, recalling a great episode of South Park in which the two redneck hunters use that line to justify blowing away all sorts of endangered fauna.
Two decades before MAGA, Trey and Matt had captured the stupidity of the folks who would become that political base.
Meanwhile, the governor of Missouri, a deranged state that's also the place of my birth, says he's going to mobilize the National Guard to deal with political opposition in the form of organized protests tomorrow.
I'd point to the governor's almost complete lack of formal education as a key to making such a ridiculous order, but just down the road in the Dumbshine State there's a Yale law grad advocating running over protesters if a MAGA motorist is feeling threatened.
Of course, your author and his beautiful wife will be among those protesters tomorrow morning, in the relatively safe environs of New York State. Not much threat of government thugs attacking us, and the MAGA base here are largely Amish types---if they come after us in their buggies we can at least get a running start.
And just when you think things can't get much more apocalyptic, Israel starts a war with Iran overnight.
I have to say the list of targets made me a little nostalgic. Back in my fighter pilot days, we briefed sweeps across those same places, thinking Iran was the biggest threat in the area before Bush I deftly pivoted to Iraq.
I'm also impressed with the technical skill of this potentially world-ending operation. They apparently snuck truckloads of drones and high explosives deeply into Iran before the attack, sort of like the Ukrainians did in Russia last week, allowing them to eliminate Iran's air defenses from within before the first F-35 came over the horizon. Mossad, a truly scary bunch, apparently fanned out to assassinate Iran's top nuclear scientists. Iran's top military leadership was vaporized in precision missile strikes. Having participated in one of these operations back when dinosaurs roamed the flight line, I have to at least give them a polite golf clap.
The world press expressed surprise when their Hezbollah toadies declined to get involved. I'm perhaps less so, for a couple reasons. Israel sort of ran Hezbollah through the wood chipper a few months ago as part of the Gaza operation, and I reckon they'd like to avoid a sequel. Perhaps more important, we in the west forget that Iranians are not Arabs: they're ethnically different, speak a different language, and will bow up if you mistake them for those similar looking folks on the other side of the Persian Gulf. That goes both ways, and I can't help thinking the Iranians are learning that blood is thicker than whatever religious glue bound them to their Lebanese clients.
So, what to do with this apocalypse that's taking shape? Well, tomorrow and I P will protest, not because I want to do it so much as the fact that I'm called up short by the admonition repeatedly voiced in one of my favorite blogs: "What would you have done if you were a German in 1933? You're doing it right now." Yep. It may not make a difference, but we'll be out there. You should do the same.
Beyond that, P and I are going to hunker down and concentrate on us for a couple days at the Cliff. Life's hard right now, for a lot of reasons. We need to take care of each other. And you need to do the same. We're all in this together, after all.
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