To FDR's famous "we have nothing to fear but fear itself," I'd offer an amendment:

"We have nothing to get hysterical about but hysteria itself."

This morning, Drudge linked a "news" report from WorldNetDaily (where else?) which is little more than a regurgitation of a minister's repeated claims that the end is near.

Excerpt:

AN EARTH-SHATTERING CALAMITY IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN. IT IS GOING TO BE SO FRIGHTENING, WE ARE ALL GOING TO TREMBLE - EVEN THE GODLIEST AMONG US.

For ten years I have been warning about a thousand fires coming to New York City. It will engulf the whole megaplex, including areas of New Jersey and Connecticut. Major cities all across America will experience riots and blazing fires--such as we saw in Watts, Los Angeles, years ago.

There will be riots and fires in cities worldwide. There will be looting--including Times Square, New York City. What we are experiencing now is not a recession, not even a depression. We are under God's wrath.

A lot of people are predicting a lot of things these days, presumably because they sincerely believe them, but (at least in the case of most dire economic predictions), they offer some purported evidence in support of their warnings. Wilkerson offers nothing, other than his status as a minister and authorship decades ago of "The Cross and the Switchblade."

I read the book as homework for a Sacred Studies class when I was a kid, and I enjoyed it.

I also read Paul Ehrlich's "The Population Bomb" (along with "Silent Spring") as homework for a Biology class.

I'm in my mid 50s and I've been waiting for the predicted End of the World for most of my life.

I have come to the conclusion that the World will outlast me, and that I won't be a witness to its much-predicted End.

(Sob.)

Apparently to some people that just isn't fair.

UPDATE: Breathing causes Global Warming.

No seriously.

AFTERTHOUGHT: Might there be a direct relationship between hysteria and cynicism?

In my case at least, the more overwrought appeals to hysteria I heard that never came true, the more cynical I became. Perhaps that explains why hucksters of all stripes spend so much time trying to overcome or decry "cynicism."

(It's probably a basic principle of salesmanship too, but that's another topic....)