Politics & Power Quote by Andrew Denton

Forty-two percent is a punchline hiding in plain sight: Denton doesn’t need to crack wise because the statistic does it for him. The intent is to make you feel the cognitive whiplash of a modern, wealthy democracy flirting with apocalyptic certainty. It’s comedy as alarm bell, delivered with the calm, reportorial cadence of “a poll earlier this year,” which mimics the tone of sober news while smuggling in something fundamentally un-sober.

The subtext is less about theology than about mood. “End Times” functions as a cultural shortcut for a whole grab-bag of anxieties: political polarization, climate dread, economic fragility, pandemic aftershocks, algorithm-fed paranoia. Denton is pointing at the way catastrophe has become a kind of everyday genre, something people consume, share, and half-believe because it gives chaos a narrative spine. If history feels like it’s slipping, prophecy offers the comfort of a plot.

There’s also a sly implication about American exceptionalism curdling into American fatalism. The line frames belief not as fringe behavior but as mass sentiment, which is the unnerving part: when nearly half a country is primed for the apocalypse, compromise and long-term planning start to look optional. Denton’s joke isn’t “Americans are crazy.” It’s “look how normal the unthinkable has become,” and how polling language can domesticate even the end of the world into a percentage point.