Mark Morford is busy today warning us, in that extra-special Mark Morford kind of way, that President Bush is about to bring about the apocalypse. This borders a bit on the shrill and hysterical side even for the shrill, hysterical Morford.

I will, when the devolution comes and oil is $200 a barrel and we are at war with China and the dollar is worth about three cents on the euro, be relying on the talents and largesse of others. I have, for example, a wonderful brother-in-law with his own ranch-compound up near Spokane, well stocked with guns and canned goods and copious hiding spaces, and it is remote and rural and ready to be turned into a guarded inbreeding complex just after BushCo finally mistakes his electric toothbrush for the “nukular” button and hastens the end of the world as we know it, just as the evangelicals are right now pleading.

His support for the contention that the end is nigh comes from people who seem to indulge in a sort of wish fulfillment for the types who secretly imagine that the Unabomber might have been onto something. Morford describes his view of Armageddon with such passion that readers would be forgiven for wondering if he truly hopes that it might come to pass: it would be the ultimate opportunity for the arrogant writer to shout “I told you so” and wallow even more in his self-righteousness.

Of course, he ascribes the push for the final days right in the lap of those scary evangelicals. That’s painting with a mighty broad brush.

Aside from the completely fantastic nature of what he has written, the most startling thing is his complete disdain for anyone who isn’t, well, him. He appears to hate rural America nearly as much as he hates President Bush.

Sure-sure, cities are the cultural and social and economic engines of the nation; sure we have all the Ph.D.s and all the artistic talents and all the book-learnin’ and progressive ideas and cool European cars and the good wine and the better sex and the polysyllabic words.

But when the economy collapses and the End is Nigh, well, most of us shall fall by the roadside, begging for scraps from the angry evangelical Idaho potato farmer in the beat-up pickup with the little flags stuck on the bumper, and he shall chortle and spit tobacco through his nine teeth and turn up the James Dobson Christian Family Hour on the AM and drive off toward the mushroom cloud, whistling.

Frankly, Morford is just a jerk with no regard for people who aren’t little Morford clones. His argument for his own superiority--difficult to pull off when you admit that you have not skills other than those akin to knowing how to shop and find parking spaces--seems to be that he drinks good wine and has great sex. While those are both swell pastimes, that resume (even when padded with his history as a professional writer) seems a little thin.

Which might be why at the end of the piece, he imagines that when the end does come, he’ll just toddle off after drinking the special Kool Aid. The chance of Morford being right is even more slender than that resume. The economy isn’t about to collapse, the world supply of oil isn’t near exhaustion, and we aren’t about to start a nuclear war. In fact, if anyone starts detonating nuclear weapons, it’s far more likely to be terrorists than anyone in the US military.

But, if that tragedy did come about--if our world really did collapse for whatever reason--then the more noble goal would be finding a way to help pick up the pieces and start over again. One of the most noble and defining of human traits is perseverance, and on that scale Morford finds himself sadly lacking. While those who care would work to rebuild, he would just sit around whining about his uncharged iPod.

Something about Morford and his self-righteous pose has always come across as tremendously small-minded and mean. After this article, he also seems to be a little more useless than before.

Read the article.