richardt@orstcs.UUCP (richardt) (08/21/85)
It's nice to know that somebody else is foretelling trouble on the horizon. I've been predicting that the '90s will be an interesting decade, in the same sense that the '30s and '60s were, for more than 3 years now. Those predictions rest on the basic assumption that we don't blow ourselves up first, of course. Until then however, life will be relatively quiet on the home front -- all of us radicals will of course be using UseNet and other means of avoiding the issue until then. But the big question is still, what kind of trouble will be happening? The following scenarios seem open: 1) The South Sfrican Police Action; 2) The Defense of El Salvador; 3) The Resurrection of Humanism, Secular and otherwise; 4) Sleep,2,3,4 -- dystopia studiers should recognize this one. 5) Ecotopia, Revisited -- same comment Why 1989- 1992, instead of now? Because the people are still too young. Most of the radicals of that eras haven't gotten out of high school yet, although they are starting to believe that they don't like the world around them. And most of us know enough about 1967-1972 that our emotional batteries haven't been revved up yet. And most of us won't be running the show when 1990 rolls around. There's also the fact that it will take that long for one of two things to happen: either the economy will be good enough that people will be thinking about other things (its the young, well-educated, relatively wealthy people of a generation who start revolutions and scream loudly), or the economy will be so bad that no one will care about losing their job. In any case, the four horses will have more fun than usual for about five years in there. And the radicals, both right and left, will have more work, although at least some of us will not be having fun (crunch! goes the truncheon). But life will definitely be *real* interesting. orstcs!richardt "Everthing in this book may be wrong" -- identify the book