Ishmael Scott Reed is an American poet, novelist, essayist, songwriter, playwright, editor and publisher known for his satirical works challenging American political culture. Perhaps his best-known work is Mumbo Jumbo (1972), a sprawling and unorthodox novel set in 1920s New York that has been ranked among the 500 most important books in the Western canon.
Photo by Laurel Tabak
Speech Collaborator: Don Shiffrin
SCRIPT:
Is An Apocalypse Really Necessary?
Christianity includes a judgment day which, as a Puritan thinker said, will separate the wheat from the chaff. The Christian Apocalypse is depicted in many western paintings and literature. That’s where such End Times thinking should remain. In books and paintings.
Unfortunately, such thinking has entered politics. We have a president who, prodded by his evangelical followers, views himself as an agent of the End Times. Calls himself “the chosen one.”Who in their right mind would want the world to end with some people floating into space and others left behind to burn up? Do we want our families, friends and neighbors to burn up?
I’d written in 2016 that though millions voted for Trump they formed a death cult.* He announced that he was going to damage children’s lungs by easing up on demands for climate change and lowering carbon emissions standards. He said that he would permit food manufacturers to go all out on E Coli. His policies, including his refusal to regard the COVID epidemic as a calamity, provide more evidence of his role as a death cult leader like Jim Jones. Instead of Jones offering his followers cyanide-laced Kool-Aid, Trump’s urging his followers to drink Lysol.
918 commune members died as a result of mass suicide and mass murder at Jonestown, Guyana, thousands have died as a result of Trump’s refusing to heed the warnings of his health experts and dismissing the plague as a “hoax.”
The mass rallies like the one at Mount Rushmore where thousands ignored the scientists that Social distancing and wearing masks can be seen as a form of mass suicide. Which Brittney Cooper calls Necro Politics.
The followers of Jim Jones were so genuinely frustrated with American life that they made a bad choice by following Jim Jones into the jungle. He promised them a new society. Instead, he led them into mass suicide, but never did they threaten extinction. It took Trump and his followers to accelerate that outcome.
The Anti-Defamation League has noticed a new fringe among the American right. “Its new American chapter, known as Soldiers of Odin USA, has—just since February—already amassed thousands of American members and cheerleaders ready and eager to support the group’s chapters in Finland and other countries— and to bring its anti-immigrant, anti- Muslim and refugee-hating ideology to American shores.”
The Sons of Odin’s apocalypse ends with Ragnarok? The world also burns up.
There are traditions in Buddhism and Hindu where the world ends.
What’s wrong with life continuing here on earth? If the world burns up I can’t listen to Fletcher Henderson whose music sparkles with life. Can’t eat Lamb Roast. Can’t call my brother Bennie, Jr. and laugh until I fall out of my chair. Can't make it to sixty years with my partner Carla Plank. Can't see my daughter Tennessee become a great poet.
The old end times stories have to be replaced with new ones-- Stories about life.