March 10, 1982, came and went without incident even though Earth and all the other planets in our Solar System had "aligned" on the same side of the sun for the first time since 1128 A.D.

In their 1974 bestseller "The Jupiter Effect," astronomers John Gribbin and Stephen Plagemann made a lot of money explaining why a routine astronomical event was a very bad thing for mankind.

Trading in their credentials as mainstream scientists, the astronomers laid out an apocalyptic scenario for 1982 involving weird tidal forces, seismic eruptions within the Earth's crust and a devastating series of earthquakes that would send huge chunks of California sliding into the Pacific during the "rare" planetary alignment.

Predictions of cosmic catastrophe dovetailed nicely with the fundamentalist prophesies of Hal Lindsey, the author of the bestselling tome of the gullible 1970s, "The Late, Great Planet Earth." Fretting about the apocalypse was a big part of living in that decade.

Fast forward to 2009 and it's deja vu all over again. This time, the ancient Mayan calendar and Hollywood are the prime culprits behind the latest blind, irrational panic about the End of Days. Books about the Mayans' prediction that history ends on Dec. 21, 2012, have been a publishing staple for years, taking up almost as much shelf space in chain bookstores as Freemasonry and dieting.

But, as usual, it is Hollywood that ratchets the hype up to 11. Thanks to the most relentless marketing campaign of the year, nearly everyone with a TV or computer monitor has seen one of the special effects-laden trailers for "2012," the Mayan calendar-inspired disaster movie starring John Cusack that hits theaters next month. There's no question that director Roland Emmerich ("Independence Day," "Godzilla") knows how to push our primordial buttons. The scenes of flaming asteroid fragments igniting cities, the Himalayas swamped by rising sea levels and the destruction of sacred, iconic places like the Vatican are disturbing. Most people will see "2012" because it looks entertaining, but a lot of folks will scour every scene for clues about how to navigate the planet's future three years from now.

Just as Messrs. Gribbin and Plagemann had to lie low on March 11, 1982, the Mayan calendar "experts" predicting planet-wide apocalypse on Friday, Dec. 21, 2012, are going to look pretty silly on Dec. 22 when not a single Christmas sale has been interrupted.

Already, some true believers are hedging their bets by predicting merely a "shift in planetary consciousness" instead of a literal collision between Earth and Nibiru, a heretofore unknown rogue planet. Some writers are in the absurd position of hoping for a catastrophe that day, if only to justify their book sales in the years leading up to it.

My biggest problem with doomsday scenarios of any kind is that they divert attention from the things that really ought to terrify us. Instead of wasting time arguing about whether video of Nibiru on the Internet is real, we should demand answers from the Obama White House about its ties to Goldman Sachs and why so many officials from that shameless firm have stewardship over the nation's monetary and fiscal policies.

If the differences between the Obama and Bush administrations are merely cosmetic when it comes to the protection of civil liberties, then we'll have reason to wonder if we've already been swallowed up by the Dark Ages the Mayans supposedly prophesied about.

If the U.S. is still militarily entrenched in the empire-killing quagmire that is Afghanistan on Dec. 21, 2012, we'll know that we've been played by an administration that would rather look strong than be strong.

If we limp into the future without overhauling our dysfunctional health care system, that folly will doom more Americans than anything the Mayan calendar can muster.

As it turns out, 2012 is also a presidential election year. Dec. 21 will either be the last Christmas season of President Barack Obama's first and only term in office or a hard-fought bridge to his second. If the president continues his current course of trying to split the difference between conservative and liberal in every controversy instead of leading decisively, then I wouldn't put too much stock on his chances of being re-elected. People aren't inspired to vote in record numbers by wishy-washy candidates.

It could be that America will have a new president-elect on Dec. 21, 2012. If Sarah Palin is a month away from being sworn into office with any combination of Liz Cheney, Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann or Joe the Plumber in tow, it really won't matter. At least half of the country will be on its knees praying for Nibiru to come.

Tony's Take on Comix by Tony Norman is featured exclusively in the Opinion section on PG+, a members-only web site from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.