What will happen in 2012?
The ancient Mayan calendars end at 2012, which means, of course, that the world will end then. After all, if the world was going to continue after 2012, the Mayans would have gone further with their calendar-making, because they were very clever calendar-makers; so clever, in fact, that the precise date for the end of the world is December 21, 2012.
Given this scenario, I suggest celebrating Christmas early and ferociously. This is the year to max out your credit cards, buy your kid a pony-hell-buy them a ranch to ride their pony around on. No worries about fitting into a bathing suit come spring, there will be no spring, so hedonistic holiday eating binges all around!
But what if the Mayans just ran out of calendar tablets when they got to 2012? “Ahuatl, go get some more calendar tablets.” “How far did you get?” “2012” “All right, I’ll pick some up next time I go to the quarry.” The Mayans weren’t such great predictors. For example, they didn’t seem to foresee the fact that their civilization would be gone 1,000 years before the fateful year 2012 rolled around.
New Agers, think 2012 is a significant date. They’ve been looking for a new age (hence the name) since they skipped around singing about the dawning of the Age of Aquarius back in the Make Love Not War days. They think 2012 marks the beginning of a new era in which Mother Earth and her children will undergo a positive physical or spiritual transformation, when peace will guide the planets and love will steer the stars.
The theorists from the Dark Side think 2012 will bring a catastrophe, perhaps a cataclysmic solar event, the earth’s collision with a black hole, an asteroid, or the planet Nibiru. For Dark Side Theorists these scenarios are actually preferable to the world’s surviving 2012 and being taken over by the creeping Islamo-Socialist-Homosexual conspiracy currently at work.
Solar destruction, black holes, planet Nibiru, evolutionary great leap forward-all of these will be believed by someone, somewhere; and if history repeats, probably by many people in many places. The New Agers can claim that a spiritual change took place on December 21, 2012, because its spiritual and you can’t actually see it. If, on the other hand, earth gets vacuumed into a black hole, no one will be around to take credit though Dark Theorists will be shouting, “See, I TOLD you!” even as the earth dissolves.
What will happen on November 6, 2012 is that the U.S. will hold a Presidential election-Yes, the $6 Billion Dollar Great American Political Circus is coming to town! Candidate’s hairlines, waistlines, and family members will be minutely examined and debated. Tempers will flare, pundits will spit venom, and campaign ads will appeal to our basest instincts and cause us to bemoan how dirty politics has become-just like back in the 1800’s.
What Americans will believe about December 21, 2012 will, in many, cases depend on who gets elected. The Dark Side will be expecting-maybe praying for- planet Nibiriu if Obama gets elected. The New Agers may go back to the drawing board if a Republican gets elected, looking for a calendar from another lost civilization and a new date for when peace will begin to rule the planet. December 21 and then December 25 will pass into history and the rest of us will take down the Christmas tree, make resolutions, and go on a diet.
The Road Upward 