Existentially speaking

"Pharoah, sir, is this what you'd call an Existential threat?"

Existential

(by R.P.Edwards)

"Existential"

It's all the rage!

On many lips

On ever page

It's linked with "threat"
And means the worst
But the "greater" threat
Is when...we're cursed 

"Existential threat;" a phrase heard much of late. The context is usually in regards to terrorism and how its perpetrators either are, or are not an existential threat to the United States.

Well, I must admit, this pairing was a "head scratcher" for me. However, after a little research I think I have the gist, namely: a "people" being destroyed; as in, ceasing to exist; as in...a whole lot of dead "us."

So, I guess, since the "evil" folk of the Islamic persuasion don't yet have the ability to slaughter us good, their potential badness, on the dead scale, is only in the number category of, say, highway deaths (35,000)? No, that's too many. Say then, from falling off ladders (around 400). Yeah, that's better.

Of course, this only applies to "far away" us. Israel--a much closer target--is definitely in the "existential" bulls eye. The blood cult that lusts for their land is only an extended hike away. And, if nukes are acquired, that's a game-changer for all of us.

Well, if I may, and if you'll allow me; "our" collective problem is not that there is evil in the world and that it is out to get us; no, our "problem" is that we, by our actions and intent, show that we don't warrant an intervention by the Supreme Being mentioned in our founding document. We've strayed quite a bit (see previous posts) and ignoring, and even goading...Him; yes, that results in an existential threat that no distance will assuage.

Two more things: Here's a link to a palatable definition of Existential   

And a quote from our beloved 16th president seems appropriate...once again.

We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!

(Abraham Lincoln 1863) 

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