Eight Years From Now

In the 1969 hit song “2525,” the lyrics blithely ponder, “If man is still alive, If woman can survive, They may find..."

Well it’s not quite 2525, but 2016 is close enough--if we are even here on Planet Earth then.

The Mayan calendar stops on December 21, 2012. At that time, the winter Solstice sun crosses the center of our galaxy. Does that mean Earth reverses polarity and heads back into the Big Bang from whence it came? We get sucked back up into anti-matter? No Christmas, no Happy New Year? Or, does the clock simply get reset?

Remember the Y2K predictions? People were stocking up on emergency rations, but nothing happened. I can imagine how many pessimists drank themselves silly, toasting the demise of technology-dependent Earthlings, only to wake up the next day to the hangover headache from hell. Did they remember to stock up on Excedrin? The truth is, nobody really knows what’s going happen, but I, no Nostradamus, predict:

More gray hair. Dammit. That means my hairstylist will make more money. Eight years closer to Social Security, which amazingly has survived the Republicans’ attempts to “privatize” the system (a euphemism for raid the coffers and then stick it to taxpayers for a bailout).

The good news is that ordinary citizens have participated in self-governance during the Obama presidency, and collectively, we have put a dent in global warming. Mass transit is everywhere, replacing the huge, individually-driven automobiles that Americans so dearly loved. Gas has been replaced by clean fuel and prime habitat has been given back to the wildlife. Polar bears have been spared extinction! Alaska is still pristine. There are organic community gardens everywhere, and local co-ops distribute food that its citizens have raised. Factory farms have gone bankrupt and their CEOs do penance by hauling manure to compost bins. Sonars were outlawed in our oceans, and marine life is making a dramatic comeback.

The economy still sucks, but we have finally come to the realization that Karl Marx was right: there is enough to go around. We have a global flat tax and the tax loopholes and lawyers who helped people jump over them are gone. Women represent 50 percent of elected politicians and have finally made “family values” a reality versus a counterfeit ideology. We have a four-day workweek! Education is fully funded. Affordable healthcare is available to everyone.

Britney’s kids are pre-adolescents. We found out that Angie and Brad were the genesis of the nursery rhyme, “There was an old woman who lived in a shoe . . .”

Facebook went the way of MySpace.

George Bush went back to college to study Comparative Religion, earned grades higher than a C, then converted to Buddhism and donated his vast ill-gotten oil fortunes to repay his bad karma.

Animals are recognized and venerated as sentient beings, a vast connection of diversity in the cosmic web of life of which we are all a part.

Life is good.