By Nathan Barton

The stories seem to come thick and fast. Here are just a few:
GQ Magazine reports from Washington, that in Seattle an armband-wearing, ranting neo-Nazi knocked out after being tracked down with Twitter through the streets of the city. “Antifascists” exhibited THEIR brand of aggressive, violent transnational socialism and pretend anarchism by punching him out – in true mob fashion. GQ blames the “Trump Era” and therefore The Donald, and not the mob or Twitter, used to hunt down the evil monster to prevent him from speaking to people.

Fom KHOU, we learn about a woman’s complaint about Hobby Lobby decor. This time, the preferred method of communicating the idiotic ravings is Facebook. A snowflake posted a picture of a fake raw cotton plant on Facebook urging the craft store giant Hobby Lobby to take down its decor calling for ‘a little sensitivity.’ The whinging poster seems to be upset with raw cotton, a commodity gained largely at the expense of black slaves [up to about 150+ years ago], being used as a decoration. The poster is joined by a large gang of idiots: over 15,000 shares and more than 166,000 comments.

(I lived in a cotton growing region (the Texas Panhandle) in my childhood. Even though it hadn’t been even a hundred years then since slavery was officially ended, there wasn’t an acre of cotton fields within at least a hundred miles which had EVER been picked by a slave – and indeed, the only slaves ever in that area were either slaves of Comanches (who didn’t discriminate by skin color when taking captives and enslaving them) or of Spanish military, traders, and herders (ancestors of many “hispanic” snowflakes today). And yes, ALL of us used cotton boles and stems as decoration in and after harvest: the moms of my black and “hispanic” classmates as well as the nasty, evil Anglos and even us AmerInd-type families.)

This facebook attack comes just after a dust-up in Tennessee, where the president of David Lipscomb University apologized for the evil actions of serving hispanic students tacos, and decorating the tables for a dinner with black students with cotton and serving them a meal including cornbread and macaroni and cheese! (Lipscomb is a very conservative Christian university founded by and named for a man who preached and taught against slavery starting about 200 years ago, and refused to support either the Union or the Confederacy in the War Between the States.)

The C’Springs Gazette reports that the “Mad Pooper” is being sought by Colorado Springs police. A family has spent weeks trying to get a mystery woman they’ve dubbed ‘The Mad Pooper’ to stop defecating in their neighborhood, right outside their house near Briargate and Union boulevards (a nice, upscale neighborhood in the city with which I am familiar. Apparently the runner leaves behind human waste at least once a week, for the last seven weeks. And we thought that (some) dog owners were incredibly rude!

At Georgia Tech a suicidal 21- or 22-year-old student, with some kind of non-standard sexual orientation (will I get in trouble for using that phrase?), committed suicide by cop, by calling in to 911 to report a suspicious person (himself) and then walking towards the cops with a knife in his hand, refusing to stop or drop the knife. So they dropped him. Now, the protests against this killing by cops have turned violent, according to Yahoo Finance. Of course, nothing promotes peace and not killing people like violent protests and riots.

I could go on, but these are just today’s headlines. The point is, the Fifty States – indeed, the world – resembles an extreme version of Robert A. Heinlein’s story, “The Year of the Jackpot,” published in 1952. At least all but the last few scenes. In that story (reflecting, perhaps, his worldview which later changed), his hero first encounters a cross-dressing couple on the streets of Los Angeles, and then a woman (the heroine of the story) who tries to stroll the streets of Los Angeles in the buff. He points out all the cycles of all the world’s history that seem to be hitting a maximum all at once. They flee to the frontier to get away from the rapidly fragmenting civilization, complicated by massive natural disasters.

Unlike his designation of the late 20th Century as “The Crazy Years” in his Future History timeline, the Fifty States – indeed, the human race and Terra itself – do not survive the Year of the Jackpot. It is NOT a short story with a happy ending.

But the insanity and the rest of it seem to eerily forecast the world of 2017, which seems to already have exceeded the craziness of 2016 and previous years.

And natural events seem to be right in step – the cycles seem to be climbing and climbing. Some of the biggest hurricanes in recorded history, earthquakes, solar flares, warnings of volcanic activity, and of course, the constant revelations (or at least, claims) about global warming and cooling.

And a LOT of people are running scared. I am constantly reading more and more questions about “the end of the world” and the “Second Coming” and similar fears (or hopes). And not just from the religiously minded. Indeed, some numerologist has “calculated” that the Second Coming is scheduled for Saturday (the 23rd of September 2017, for the record).

People are seeing collapse, growing totalitarianism, fascists and antifascists under every curbstone, a less polite and overall nastier society (and political economy), potential epidemics and pandemics and monetary cataclysms on every hand.

Sometimes their fears are at least based on something that is real. Even Black Lives Matter folks have some justification for their protests – if not for the initiation of violence which they share with antifa and the alt-right, and more. Calls for secession from dozens of localities in half-a-dozen or more countries grow louder. (Sometimes de facto if not de jure.) Long-term trends, like the supposedly non-existent inflation, the national debt, consumer debt, the increasing length of time to maturity for the young, and many other things, seem to be going up, up, and up.

I am not going to predict the actual “Year of the Jackpot.” But I am going to point out that change happens, and that the rate of change is increasing, or seems to be. And I ask, are we prepared?

Are things getting worse? Yes. Are things getting better? Yes. It depends on your point of view, of course. For some events, it is good for some and bad for other people. Either way, it is disrupting habits and traditions. Expect more of it. And be prepared.

Look to your family, your friends and associates, your community – and be prepared. It sounds very much like a lot of people were NOT prepared in Texas, in Puerto Rico, in Cuba, in central Mexico, even in Florida and Georgia. They have many reasons for that, I am sure. But the fact is, THEY WERE NOT PREPARED. More than just physically, they were not prepared mentally and socially – which may explain some of the weirdness going on.