As the good doctor(s) long ago diagnosed, the Planet Earth certainly has come down with a horrible case of the humans. The poor thing’s gettin’ worse and worse too, ‘cause they wouldn’t let Kevorkian slow it down at all (not that I would instigate the like). And now it seems we are on the cusp of something tragically and beautifully horrible, the death of a generation coinciding with the ascent of another, like two planets aligned. Elections, like super bowls, have continued to grow stranger and stranger yet, more and more theatrical every go-around and always putting on a better show than the last. All that really lasts are the addictions to sex and drugs and loud music that our parents don’t like, but that’s all right — it’s carried us to college and some of us to our early 30s. Unfortunately the system has turned in on itself like the plates under our dear ol’ Missouri finally cracking from the pressure of 10,000 years’ worth of moving the face of the earth a couple inches per year. A fissure of values between the digital generation and the last of a dying breed known as “Generation X” has appeared before us. They picked the wrong battles — religious and figurative, such as the Wars on Drugs and Terror — and we are getting the shaft.

The world is going through another Enlightenment, and we call it the Internet. It is synthetic, and some would call it unnatural. But like any organism, the Internet is spreading its roots, and like any regime that’s going to stick around a while, it’s gaining a vast empire. Relaying the most potent poison on the face of this earth at the rate it can be produced (The Idea), people all around the world are reporting symptoms such as demands for equality, peace and — most terribly of all — Freedom. This is the Digital Age, and the freak show we see around us, that is the toppling of a statue named Industry. Generations before us pondered how much they could produce while we will pontificate on what we can create: false worlds, moon bases, better drugs. And that paradigm shift is going to be a nasty battle. Big talking heads of state will play their song and dance to distract you from the fact that the piano ain’t even really playing. Parties will rise and fall, because they don’t belong. Terrorism and Drugs will win, because neither can be shot. Obama will win just because the GOP is falling apart. Banks will crash. Credit will return to zero. And then we’ll all return to zero.

Best of luck, keep your head down, and read more Hunter Thompson.

Keruaco H. Dodgeson

spgp63@mail.missouri.edu