World gone wrong? A look at the year ahead

In the spirit of Robert Heinlein’s “Future History” series, Managing Editor Frank Miele has prepared a brief fictional primer on the major threats that are likely to afflict us in the coming year. (Warning: Satire ahead!)

We are still two years from the end of the world based on the Mayan calendar, and for that I suppose we should be grateful.

Or should we? Is it possible that the Mayans got it wrong?

Could they be off by two years? Because 2010 looks an awful lot like “The Year of the Jackpot,” as science fiction author Robert Heinlein called the year when the wheels finally fell off — when everything that could go wrong did go wrong.

In the spirit of Heinlein’s “Future History” series, I have prepared a brief fictional primer on the major threats that — as luck would have it (bad luck, I am afraid) — are likely to afflict us in the coming year:

1) After health-care reform is signed into law in the first weeks of 2010, the Senate jumps to the next item on its agenda to fundamentally transform America — the Shelter for the Homeless, Transients and Troubled Act, which basically provides government housing for everyone, whether they want it or not.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Majority Leader Reid, who are coincidentally both Democrats (not that there is anything wrong with that), issued a joint statement: “Lack of money should not be a barrier to decent accommodations for all citizens — indeed for all people, whether they are legal residents or not.”

The bill will permit the new Federal Housing Authority to requisition private housing from those who have an excess of it — namely second homes, vacation homes, or excessively large homes (for instance three bedrooms for a family of four or five) — and reassign it to anyone who has a need for it or who has a union card.

According to Reid: “Of course, there will be some resistance to the abolition of private property, but there was resistance to the abolition of slavery, too. Some people just don’t understand that the general welfare must take precedence over individual selfishness.” He was right. Some people did not understand it.

2) The federal government, not content to install new rights, was also busy in 2010 taking away some rights as well. Shortly after the Super Bowl, the House began hearings on doing away with politically incorrect names for sports teams. The Washington Redskins objected to being renamed the Washington Lobbyists, and in the turmoil that followed, President Obama declared that football itself is nothing more than a miniaturized ground war that symbolizes America’s imperialist history and that the sport should be completely banned. It was too early by year’s end to know whether this would lead to a second Nobel Peace Prize for the president.

3) Although he had already been out of office for two years, petitions were being circulated by mid-2010 to impeach President George W. Bush for signing the Patriot Act after the Sept. 11 attacks. President Obama supported the impeachment effort, although he ironically rejected the effort to repeal the Patriot Act itself, describing it as a necessary tool for law enforcement to battle terrorism. President Bush warned that if the impeachment succeeds, it means that he will be replaced as ex-president by Vice President Dick Cheney. This infuriated bloggers at the Huffington Post, who immediately switched gears and started a movement to impeach Bill Clinton instead so that Al Gore could finally get his just desserts and become an ex-president.

4) In a bizarre switch, California became the first state to legalize marijuana and at the same time criminalize tobacco. The move to legalize marijuana was not unexpected, as not only most of the population of the state, but also most of the  politicians who voted on the measure, are admitted pot smokers. The decision to criminalize tobacco came as a surprise to many, however, and appeared to be the result of a heavy lobbying effort by illegal immigrants from Mexico who complained that they were now displaced workers in the drug trafficking industry. In order to ensure that the illegals did not wind up on the welfare rolls in bankrupt California, the state opted to ban tobacco so that crime families would be able to stay in business. Gov. Schwarzenegger proclaimed himself to be pro-family and declared that the state has once again proven to be a leader in family values.

5) In a move that was only reported on the Internet and the Glenn Beck show, the Obama administration struck a deal with China to move the embalmed body of Mao Zedong from Tiananmen Square to the West Wing of the White House, where it would go on permanent exhibit. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the idea began as a joke after Internet bloggers revealed in 2009 that the White House Chrismas tree included an ornament bearing the likeness of Mao, the Communist founder of China who is reputed to have killed upwards of 50 million people. “The joke was on us though,” Gibbs said. “Turns out that the Chinese had been looking for a proper repository for Mao’s remains for some time, and felt that the Obama White House would truly appreciate them.” The only comment from Beijing came off-the-record from a member of Hu Jintao’s presidential staff, who said, “Mao is so 1900s. We are way past that.”

6) In a stunning move, the American Psychiatric Association added homophobia to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and said that “those who fear homosexuals must be a brick short of a full load.” It was acknowledged that homophobes share many characteristics of delusional thinking with those who persist in worshipping mythical “sky Gods,” although such religionists remain unclassified for now. It should be noted that the declaration that homophobia is a disease came less than 40 years after the American Psychiatric Association first removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders.

7) In another followup to the passage of the new national health-care plan, Congress approved legislation in 2010 declaring that guns are a health danger. Although guns could not be banned outright because of the Second Amendment protections which guarantee that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed,” it was determined that a hefty surcharge could be added to the mandatory health-insurance coverage of any citizen who chose to possess firearms. Surcharges begin at $2,000 for each small-caliber handgun and work their way up into the high six-figures for certain semi-automatic weapons. The president reassured people worried about their gun rights that “We are not coming for your guns; we are coming for your wallets.”

8) In a move to streamline homeland security procedures, it was announced shortly before the holiday travel season in 2010 that in order to keep the airlines running on time, known Islamic terrorists will be exempted from watch lists at airports and border stations. “It is becoming burdensome on our security personnel to try to sort through who is and isn’t a terrorist,” said a major Homeland Security official. “Plus, we have discovered that it hurts the feelings of non-terrorist Muslims to focus too closely on actual terrorists who just happen to be Muslims. We think this represents a good compromise.”

———

Note from the author: The foregoing is intended as satire, not prophecy. However, if it turns out to be prophecy, not satire, we have one thing to look forward to — 2012 and the end of the world. Thank God for the Mayans.

n Frank Miele is managing editor of the Daily Inter Lake and writes a weekly column. E-mail responses may be sent to edit@dailyinterlake.com