Zombies, the Apocalypse, and the Decline of the Republic

Flopping Aces ^ | 02-22-14 | Dave The Sage

[Starman417]

Apocalypticism has exploded in popularity and, while nuclear war and pandemics have always been a starting point, the concept of the Zombie Apocalypse trumps them all. The appeal and wild popularity of shows like The Walking Dead, movies like World War Z, and the slew of apocalyptic, gloom and doom series and specials on cable television continues to grow by leaps and bounds. But the reasons behind such interest are often subconscious at times and not fully understood.

The Leftist activist and agitator Noam Chomsky was recently asked “why there’s this preoccupation with the apocalypse and with zombies right now in our culture?” I concurred with the first part of his response which was that that he felt the focus on zombies was “a reflection of fear and desperation” by “an unusually frightened country.” But quickly the obsessive liberal impulse to blame America first and foremost for all ills, real and imagined including the public’s obsession with a zombie apocalypse, rose irresistibly to the surface. He went through the history of fear in popular culture as outlined in the book War Stars by Bruce Franklin. Although the fear is embodied in various forms, he sees a common thread throughout:

“There are a couple of themes that run through it that are pretty striking. For one thing, one major theme in popular literature is that we are about to face destruction from some terrible, awesome enemy. And at the last-minute we are saved by a superhero or a super weapon, or in recent years high school kids going to the hills to chase away the Russians, things like that. That’s one theme that runs through constantly. And there’s a sub-theme. It turns out this enemy, this horrible enemy that’s about to destroy us, is somebody we’re crushing.”

“ I think it’s, much of it is kind of just a recognition, at some level of the psyche, that if you’ve got your boot on somebody’s neck, there’s something wrong. And that the people you’re oppressing may rise up and defend themselves, and then you’re in trouble. And another is strange properties the country has always had of fear of invented dangers. There is a kind of paranoid streak in the culture that’s pretty unusual.”

And that’s about the best the Left can do I guess in trying to fathom the country’s fascination with a Zombie Apocalypse. It’s all just collective, subconscious guilt. Nice try, I suppose, but if that was a “hit or miss” explanation it’s far closer to a miss than a hit.

There is indeed a vast undercurrent of suspicion, unease, paranoia, division, worry, pain, and even trauma right underneath the surface of the national consciousness. I believe it is manifested in the popularity of zombie themed entertainment and the concept of the doomsday scenario in general in popular culture. The feeling that things are rapidly unraveling and coming apart is a constant theme in social media and shared by vast swaths of the population, not to mention visualized in everything from backyard bunkers to Zombie apocalypse decals, Facebook groups, and bar crawls.

Collectively, we have lost our belief in a positive future.

[bicyclerepair]

The hardest thing about the zombie apocalypse is pretending not to be excited.

[tbw2]

I recently got flamed on Reddit for saying that marijuana was the next level of distraction from bread and circuses. Free food and entertainment wasn’t enough, drug people into compliance.
And they welcome it because it is a new “freedom”.

[tbw2]

I can’t remember who wrote it, but there as a contrast between politics and favorite monsters.
The left sees the right as zombies, mindless consumers who destroy individuality and creativity necessary to survival.
The right sees the left as vampires, draining the life blood of a people, killing them or converting them, over-sexualized but never creating new life.

[PapaBear3625]

There is a certain segment of the population which the middle class has a concern about. Particularly the potential of them rampaging through our neighborhoods some day. But it's very politically incorrect to speak about them directly, so we content ourselves with talking about "zombies".

But when we increase our inventory of "zombie killing tools -- just in case", everybody knows what we're really talking about.

[trisham]

Imho, it’s as I felt after the 2008 election; liberals are zombies.