(Images by The Drifter)
“Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me.” – John, Revelation
“There’s a man goin’ ’round takin’ names / And he decides who to free and who to blame.” – Johnny Cash, “The Man Comes Around”
In the old days, you could hear the barbarians arriving at the gate out of nowhere.
And it might not have meant the whole world, but it meant that your world, was about to end: completely, and thoroughly: forever; which was tantamount, back then, to the whole world ending.
It’s happened thousands, or even millions, of times before, here on Planet Earth, to humans. The end comes. And it comes hard. And it comes fast. And it comes for good. That’s it: kaput! Lights out; the world you knew and thought would last beyond you is suddenly gone.
People always knew it could happen at any time. Even though we have nukes now and are capable of blowing up virtually the whole world, we could never be sure, under those circumstances, that the nukes got everybody.
It’s actually almost impossible that the nukes will get everybody, if there’s a nuclear war.
There will probably be at least some random groups of people, in the southern hemisphere among the mountains and jungles, for example, who survive.
Even if some celestial body, hurled by the hand of God, crashes into Planet Earth and wipes out all humans; even then; we would never know, individually, that the world was, for sure, over everywhere, for everybody.
Even if it were true, we wouldn’t know it.
The end will come.
We can be sure of that.
The threats we are facing now are legion, and so horrifying, if you stare them in the face, that it seems like the book of Revelation, which was one of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson’s favorite literary works.
The book of Revelation was written as a warning; and to give aid and comfort to the good people, the few good people, who live, who live now, who have lived before, and who will always live: until the end.
Charles Bukowski wrote this: “Goodness can be found sometimes in the middle of hell.”
Buk considered the society he was inhabiting at the time to be HELL.
It’s worth considering what he and others like him would think about our own day.
Would they suddenly think everything was great back in the time/s in which they lived which they thought were hell at the time? Would they suddenly think it was great then, and horrible now?
Buk also wrote this (probably drunk): “Slavery was never abolished, it was widened to include everyone.”
On this Sunday, October 26, 2025, the underground internet persona “The Drifter” asks caring Readers to consider the following passage from the book of Revelation, one of Hunter S. Thompson’s favorite literary works, in a metaphorical way.
And in a symbolic way.
Not in a literal way. It was never meant to be taken literally.
The metaphorical truth it tells is the truth.
“And the beast was captured. And with it the false prophet who in its presence had done the signs by which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped its image. These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur. And the rest were slain by the sword that came from the mouth of him who was sitting on the horse. And the birds were gorged with their [the evil people’s] flesh.”
Saragun Springs 
To all
Tomorrow’s post escaped its cell and gave the world a teasing, premature glimmer of itself. The wayward post has been brought back and will appear at the usual time, tomorrow.
Leila
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LA
Doesn’t surprise me that tomorrow’s post wanted to be seen today; for those who are interested, I say that “Beyond the Scientific Method” of tomorrow is a companion piece for today’s “The End of the World.”
D
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Drifter
Bukowski was right about slavery including all. And although the word is dreadful (as some words are), the objective is a very few Corporate Massas owning billions of house niggers. This is not a secret. We can see this happening and the only mystery is why the process has yet to complete.
Resilience through art is the resistance. Just plain going nuts and giving massa the finger works too. This god does not have to happen.
Brilliant work once more
Leila
(to anyone offended by nigger, which was not used to hurt or defame, I must ask why do you object to properly reacting to the word? It is waaaay too late to remove it by threat. That is corporate thinking; always suspect the Big House)
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L
“Resilience through art is the resistance” is a great, true, brilliant, awesome keeper of a sentence. Already wrote it down, by hand, on repurposed paper, and nailed it to the wall.
And I want to say here, to all, that there are many and many forms of art.
For some of us, the way we walk down the street with our head held high is art. For others of us, it may be poetry and photography. For others, it may be the way they talk to certain people, in a different way than they talk to anyone else.
“ART” does NOT only mean something by which you make big bucks and gain a temporary name for yourself which is approved of by the Corporate Machine.
It’s in the way we breathe, the way we think, the way we do NOT think (along the lines they want us to), the way our heart beats, and in the way we, quite simply, see the world.
Anyone and everyone is an artist the second they decide they are one.
The one and only real criteria now is that it be part of the resistance.
Going along with the crowd is the opposite of art, even when it looks like art to most people (which is what philosophers and literary critics are for: the good ones, that is).
The Drifter
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PS LA
The use of the N-word in the context in which you used it is not evil, but brave.
And I am not opposed, personally, to the use of any word when it’s done for the purposes of art, as it is here.
It’s a known fact that the President of the US does not use the word in public, but does use the word in private, in a derogatory and demeaning way.
Personally, I hear the word used on a daily basis in my own neighborhood/s by people in both their music, and verbally. All who are using it in these ways are black. The word is in the air, everywhere, in certain areas of Chicago and environs.
John Lennon and Yoko Ono wrote a song called “Woman is the Nigger of the World.” While the song is controversial (obviously), no one can accuse those two of using the word for nefarious purposes (or not in good faith, anyway).
D
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chilling words throughout this post. Times are very scary and everything seems insecure and ‘wobbly’ Feels as though there is evil everywhere and it is growing in size and strength. For most of us all we can do is be kind, do no harm and bathe in the beauty that is still around us. Trees, stars, mountains and the blessing of friendship.
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Hi Diane
Your description of what we can all still do now, in these terrifying times, is perfect. It sums it all up in 30 or so beautiful words and gives aid and comfort to all of us who are awake. You are absolutely right, the evil around us does seem to be collecting its power, getting ready for something. In certain ways, the threat even increases the beauty of life, somehow. I think too many people in too many places all around the world had grown too comfy and complacent. Now we will have to see if humanity can still rise to the challenge. Thank you.
D
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Hi Drifter
Strong and scary–The title had me hooked. Poe advised in his essay, “The Philosophy of Composition,” the writer should write about death. You have covered this base and some…
“The end of the world.” These worlds do end. They end for someone somewhere every second or millisecond. We walk on a graveyard and sit in a chair and look into it.
The dark cloudy picture is ominous and brings my mind back to Poe. Perfect for Revelations. This essay flows and every word catches the mind. Buk living in hell and finding a few good people reminds me of Lot in Sodom.
It doesn’t seem possible some mad man or woman who waits for their end of the world wouldn’t say fuck it and hit the button. Like a kid lighting a firecracker on the Fourth of July.
If everything was a stalemate and nuclear war was not an option. Does anyone think Hitler wouldn’t have unleashed the nuclear Holocaust anyway if he sat in his bunker with Berlin collapsing around him or up in the Eagle’s Nest drinking his pea soup after signing some silly agreement. There are people as crazy as Hitler in our present governments. They are mad with power.
It is getting so bad that everything we write is being collected and reviewed by some AI beast that is compiling us onto a list. So the strong man, the new Stalin of the night, can put check marks by our names and send us to the Gulag that is probably being constructed at this moment.
In this country they decided to elect the barbarians. Just think if Kamala would have been elected would those opposing powers have gone gently into the night? I don’t think so. They had law suits already filed to contest the battleground states, until he saw they were going to win.
Shame on you Democrats for your social lunacy and opening the border. You should have had a primary instead of appointing a successor.
Great and enthralling essay that takes the mind to many places!
Christopher
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Hi Christopher
And yikes! Your epistolary response essay is more scary than my opening salvo, or, at the least, just as scary.
Someone once said that when good people fail to do anything, it’s more dangerous than when the dangerous ones are doing all the things they will do anyway. The someone was a German, I think. Maybe Hannah Arendt.
The Democrats, I feel, could have stopped all of this, especially when the Supreme Court granted presidential immunity. Joe could have stepped in and said, “No insurrectionists and traitors as president.” He could have banished the opposition in some way. He had presidential immunity for official acts, given to him by the Supreme Court, carte blanche. Instead, he sat on his hands and did nothing. Just one example of the moral cowardice that was involved. In my opinion. The head of the Justice Department also failed miserably all during Joe’s four years. Moral paralysis, moral cowardice, complicity, who am I to say. But something could have been done.
Lincoln, or both Roosevelts, would have done something.
But then again, you’re right. It would not have stopped these people. Perhaps it would have only made the situation worse. All I do know is, the Supreme Court gave presidents immunity for official acts. And Joe did nothing, zero, zilch, with the power that was handed him. They probably knew he wouldn’t.
As William Butler Yeats wrote in “The Second Coming”: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world; the blood-dimm’d tide is loosed; and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned; the best lack all conviction; while the worst are filled with passionate intensity.” Holy wow, if he wasn’t talking about right now.
Jesus lived in the time of Herod, and folks like Pontius Pilate, washing his hands in front of everyone, like a fool, and saying, “Don’t blame me.”
Thanks for reading these columns and creating and continuing this dialogue between us that is so filled with reality in the Age of the Unreal!
D
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The Biblical commentray I’ve read suggested that Revelations was concerned with current or imminent events. It turns out that Revelations is relevant thoughout the ages.
We may as well keep on rocking in the freak world to paraphrase the philosopher not so Young Neil. Do some good have some fun, the ride will be over soon.
Behold the pale fat man.
mm
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Hi Doug,
Yes, through the magic of literature, the book of Revelation retains its relevance even today. As it says in the book of Ecclesiastes, “Vanity of vanities, saith The Preacher. There is nothing new under the sun.” (Sometimes it seems like secular Biblical scholarship misses the point through its small-minded literalness.)
Hunter S. Thompson, for his part, thought that the beast and the false prophet symbolically depicted someone like Tricky Dick Nixon. I wonder what Hunter would think if he were here today.
If you’ve never heard it before, check out Johnny Cash’s song “The Man Comes Around,” from 2002. (From his album, THE MAN COMES AROUND, 2002.)
Cash managed to reinvent and extend Revelation like no one else (which is why I tried to tap into his power through one of my epigraphs for this essay).
Thanks for reading!
D
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