Here we are, flinging ourselves headlong into the Visionary Twenty Twenties!
I’m very excited about all the potential new changes for our city, county, state, nation and world looming in the coming decade.
Potentialities are the best things you can have in the future, because they don’t have to happen. Suppose, for example, that potentially there is a slimy monster under your bed who craves blood. It’s just a potential. So, relax. Go back to sleep.
Yesterday (last Wednesday), Australia, which is on the world’s bottom and therefore starting summer (note I say “starting summer,” not “deeply into summer”), had its hottest day in recorded history of a hundred and x degrees Fahrenheit. Today (last Thursday), it had its hottest day since yesterday of one hundred and x+2 degrees Freakenheit. Potentially this could happen to us next June, but it’s just a potential. Don’t sweat it.
Locally, if I have read the news about this correctly (I only skim, so the odds of that are slim), we now, at this moment, as I write this, have a Regional Homelessness Authority. This means that all the mistakes repeatedly made in past attempts to reduce homelessness will be made by one single regional agency. The potential for making matters worse is magnified tenfold.
Potentially, we will finish getting the Light Rail to Northgate just in time for the mall to be converted to a couple hockey rinks and an alfalfa-and-goat farm and dairy outlet.
I am not worrying about any of this because I’m not afraid of any silly potentialities. Besides, I like goat milk. I like goats.
There’s one potential rearing its head as we enter the new decade, though, that I hope lives up to its promise. I’m, of course, talking about the new U.S. Space Force.
I’ve been waiting for this for over 60 years. This and my flying car.
Well, no flying car yet, but thanks to our visionary president, we’re finally getting the Space Force we’ve wanted since we saw reruns of “Tom Corbett, Space Cadet” on the tube in the ’50s: Cadets Corbett, Roger Manning and the Venusian Astro trained in preparation to join The Solar Guard. I’m sure Trump saw it, too — why else would he think we need a Space Force?
There will be a Solar Guard as soon as America takes over the Moon, Mars and enough other pieces of solar system real estate to call ourselves the United States of the Solar System (the U.S.S.S.).
Back in my youth, I would have loved to pilot a cadet training ship into an asteroid field.
Speaking of potentialities, there is no better time to predict the events of a decade than when it is just about to start, because if you do it much sooner, it’s that much further away.
Here, then, are some predictions.
I predict President Trump will not be convicted by the Senate. But I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that he will lose the 2020 presidential election, not only in the popular vote, but the Electoral College. I think that will happen even though I don’t have any guess which Democrat will win the nomination.
Naturally, my prediction that Trump will lose is only a potentiality. If he wins in 2020, I can’t see how it would be possible for Trump to leave office in 2025 without at some point establishing internment camps for homeless people, at least here on the Left Coast. Our Regional Homelessness Authority will go along with this in return for assurances of federal funding. Federal funding is an absolute must in this day and age.
Now that our state Supreme Court says that Washington state legislators have to open their records to the public, we will find out what, exactly, they do all day. We will figure out that it would be cheaper and safer just to elect them for life and hand them all the bags of money they want rather than expect them to legislate, which is what they are by far the worst at.
The Big One won’t materialize, but a Little One will scare the wits out of us.
Before the decade is over, average temperatures in the Arctic will exceed melting outside of summer. It will scare the wits out of scientists. There will be a major international conference held to figure out what to do about it. The attendants will consume record amounts of coffee and donuts.
Dr. Wes Browning is a one time math professor who has experienced homelessness several times. He supplied the art for the first cover of Real Change in November of 1994 and has been involved with the organization ever since. This is his weekly column, Adventures in Irony, a dry verbal romp of the absurd. He can be reached at drwes (at) realchangenews (dot) org
Read the full Dec. 25 - 31 issue.
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