Apocalypse Now: Chit-Chat With Friend Fred While He's Recuperating From Surgery

Alan: I have no expectation you'll act on my suggestion, at least while you're dedicated to convalescence.

But one day, I encourage you to google "Trump Supporter Shoots BLM Protester Over Removal Of Conquistador Juan de Oñate's Statue" (with quotation marks).

If it happens that you never muster the gumption to check out my "full dose," at least read Wikipedia's entry on Juan de Oñate.

If "the assiduously ignorant" -- and they are legion -- just spent 5 minutes reading about this sonofabitch, those right-wing militia men who were policing last week's protest in Arizona would have joined the protesters! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_de_O%C3%B1ate

How was it possible that we Americans remained so ignorant -- so long -- zealously sucking the sludge of Pollyanna's "official story?"

We were literally enthralled.

Made slaves.

And we pretended that our diligently-cultivated status as slaves was liberation.

We imagined ourselves a "shining city upon a hill" - a "beacon of hope" for the rest of the world.

And now "the cat is out of the bag."

Trump Cult has revealed the ever-present underbelly. The ongeoing urge to harm people of color, most notably blacks and Native Americans.

But people are waking up.

Is this "The Apocalypse" as I've always imagined it?

Notably, apocalypse meant "uncovering, disclosure, revelation," at least until 1858 when it completely absorbed the current connotation of "calamity, catrastrophe, end-time destruction."

The long-standing English meaning -- which one could represent as "putting an end to non-disclosure agreements, be they explicit or implicit" -- derives from the late 14th century understanding of "revelation, disclosure," from Church Latin apocalypsis "revelation," from Greek apokalyptein "uncover, disclose, reveal," from apo "off, away from" (see apo-) + kalyptein "to cover, conceal," from PIE root *kel- (1) "to cover, conceal, save." The Christian end-of-the-world (as we know it?) story is part of the revelation in John of Patmos' book "Apokalypsis" (a title rendered into English as pocalipsis c. 1050, "Apocalypse" c. 1230, and "Revelations" by Wyclif c. 1380). Its general sense in Middle English was "insight, vision; hallucination." The meaning "a cataclysmic event" is modern (not in OED 2nd ed., 1989); apocalypticism "belief in an imminent end of the present world" is from 1858. As agent nouns, "author or interpreter of the 'Apocalypse,'" apocalypst (1829), apocalypt (1834), and apocalyptist (1824) have been tried.

I interpret "the BLM apocalypse" as "disclosing the Wizard of Oz behind his bafflegab-bombast curtain."