One of the first posts I wrote on this blog back in March 2012 was about the National Geographic TV show "Doomsday Preppers." I had watched a couple of episodes and was amazed at the level of fear and paranoia in these hoarders of spam, rice and guns.
Prepping for the Doomsday Olympics
I wrote:
. . . these people longing for Armageddon don't laugh very much.They are deadly serious about everything and just want to show off their mad survival skills in the end-of-the-world Olympics. They've given up on life, music, and fun in favor of fear mongering.
. . . I couldn't help but feel a little disturbed that one family has enough food for the next 20 years while other people are eating out of dumpsters. But this philosophy isn't about helping the "other people" - the belief is that the weak ones are going to be destroyed by the next disaster while the self-sufficient strong survive. Doomsday Prepping begins at home and ends at home. Like their brethren in the Republican Party who don't believe in "sharing the wealth" or "that dang socialism," Doomsday Preppers live in the Narcissistic States of America.
At the time I was thinking about Paul Ryan's budget and the whole Ayn Rand philosophy as something that drives these clannish survivalists. But now that both the election and the Doomsdays - Dec. 12 or Dec. 21 - have come and gone with nothing unusual happening, these folks now seem like regular old Tea Party members to me.
Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, they fit right in with Todd Akin and the other anti-science people, the unskewed polls people who reject the math in front of their eyes and believe what they want to believe. Their love of ammunition hoarding is second only to that of Wayne LaPierre of the NRA, and if they aren't vapor-locked in their underground bunkers right now, they are cheering on the Congressman who refuse to do anything while a great country takes a dive over a man-made fiscal cliff.
Many now say it's a "New Age" instead of the end of the world. Where will the Doomsday Preppers fit into that scenario? They don't consider "peace and quiet" a plausible future, so I imagine that they really are doomed to be marginalized just like the anarchy-based Tea Party and the Gun-Loving GOP. The New Age will sail on without them, and good riddance.
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