Red Dawn
I am sitting here on the couch watching Red Dawn. I always enjoy it these days. It reminds me of nights of childhood filled with great cinema like AmeriKa, The Rambo trilogy, and the like that fueled the sentiment of anti-soviet rhetoric in the '80s. It also reminds me of nights filled with sleeplessness, waiting for the reality of these prophetic oracles to come. Now, at my age at the time I was as willing to take their reality as much as anybody elses, no matter how plausible. But I still remeber hearing the airliners coming into the Louisville International airport and hoping it was not an ICBM. The irony of this was with two brothers in the military, I knew all the lingo and all the tactics. It was kind of the political equivalent of the spiritual reality of growing up in the '80s for many of my tradition: living like a refugee when the rapture took place or living as an outlaw in the new soviet state in the US. I had both scenarios planned out, as to how I would live "off the grid" without interaction with anyone who might turn me in either to the Soviets or to the "One World Leader," Whose identity changed with every passing evangelist: Charles Manson, Kadafi, various resurrecting soviet leaders (there's some intertextuality for ya), even Prince.
My fear dominated many aspects of my pre-pubescent life. It is funny to watch how these movies now, and the fine acting involved. It shows how silly my fears might have been, on both ideas. But it is also interesting to see how much trafficing in the idealogies of fear there still is in both political and ecclesiastical circles.
One of the problems with apocalyptic views of evil it seems to me is that fear is always "just around the corner", "out there", etc. But for millions it is here. There are children and wives living in fear, real terror, every night. There are neighborhoods where terrorist stalk the streets, exploiting and extorting.
At least now, I'll know who to call when the big one comes!! You have the scenario worked out! Glad you're not that far away!
I must have lived in a psuedo-innocence/ignorance concerning the Russians. I never really feared an invasion or nuke. (especially once Jimmy Carter got out of office and we had Reagan - "Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall").
Now the rapture scared me. I had more than one church induced anxiety attack about missing the rapture.
It's sad that the church could manipulate my fear when hollywood couldn't. What's sadder is that the church should have known better.