Self-destructing just fine

Like a bad plot twist, asteroid 2024 YR4, which was supposed to have turned Earth into a Hollywood-style fireball, has been reduced to just another space rock — a victim of bad PR.

Armageddon, my dear Mandalorians — err, Contrarians — is canceled. And no, it’s not because Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck showed up with a giant space drill to the tune of Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing.”

Hooray! That’s good news for all of us, except for the doomsday preppers who have stockpiled extra crates of canned beans in their bunkers. Pass the chilis and burritos, please. There’s plenty to go around.

This week, number crunchers from NASA and the European Space Agency revised their cosmic forecast and decided that the chances of 2024 YR4 hitting the Earth on 22 December 2032 had dropped to a paltry 1.5 percent. That may even fall to zero, other lab-gown geniuses have said.

Did the asteroid, said to be capable of city-wide destruction, suffer from stage fright?

At any rate, we can all go back to paying our mortgages or planning that June wedding because the Nostradamus-que prognosis of the planet dying has proven as exaggerated as reports of Mark Twain’s death.

The rest of the world can return to scheduled programming, debating the merits of pineapple on pizza or whether Senate President Chiz Escudero outmaneuvered House members by sitting on the impeachment complaint against Vice President Sara Duterte.

While we keep an eye on the James Webb Space Telescope next month as it gives the asteroid the side-eye, we Filipinos will be forced to focus anew on the campaign antics of the stage clowns who want to get themselves elected to government.

Until then, rest easy. The universe isn’t canceling us just yet, even if it’s tempting to cancel the bleeding hearts and do-gooders now pandering for our votes.

But before you get too comfortable, don’t think we’re already out of the woods. Some people here on Earth (not that there are any on Mars — yet) seem determined to bring about our cosmic annihilation all on their own.

And leading the charge in Earth’s self-inflicted disasters? None other than Donald Trump and Elon Musk, two men who wield power like kids, out to sow mayhem under the guise of making “America great again.”

Trump, whose shenanigans feel more like a reality TV reboot, has been championing cuts to, among others, education funding because, apparently, an informed electorate is the last thing he wants.

Indeed, whether in America, the Philippines or elsewhere, we often end up with the leaders we deserve — having voted them in, without thinking, only to later bemoan our bad choices.

Between launching rockets and picking fights on X, Musk has been toying with the idea of privatizing everything in sight, including aspects of public infrastructure that should remain, well, public.

It’s almost poetic. While scientists are out there trying to save humanity from actual asteroids, these two loonies are busy throwing political and economic meteors at the very institutions meant to keep society functioning.

Maybe 2024 YR4 took one look at Earth and decided it wasn’t worth the trouble — we were already self-destructing just fine on our own.