At Least It's Cool Stuff We'll Die From

Marjorie Taylor Greene deserves the spicy afterlife I have in mind for her, yet I felt a twinge of hesitation this week, when I saw her being roasted, again, over her professed belief in a Jewish space laser. I've laughed at her, too, for this, but I shouldn't laugh too hard, because there's only one word I find incredible in the phrase "Jewish space laser," and that's because the tapestry of Judaism is wide enough, complex enough, that I can't believe a space laser would be the one thing to elicit a consensus amongst the congregation. (Plus I expect there's a passage in the Talmud that explicitly forbids a space-based weapon.)

"Space laser," as a concept, is not so laughable. If I made a list of the people I'm most afraid of, and inserted their names in front of "space laser," I'd end up with a plausible set of new phobias. If tomorrow brings news of "Jeff Bezos's space laser," I'll quake in my slippers, but you won't catch me looking shocked. "Marjorie Taylor Greene's space laser" might actually be the most believable, and not because she, with her personal faculties, might launch a laser of her own. Someone else might name theirs in her honor—your taxes might even pay for it. If we can navigate the next ten years without a Marjorie Taylor Greene Orbital Optics Station (MTG-OOPS, pronounced "mount goops") we should count that as a win for humanity.

Practically everything is plausible now. Last week in San Francisco, eight vehicles piled up in a tunnel because someone's car got scared. The guys in the Big Writers' Room Upstairs have crafted a script where anything can happen, no matter how nerdcore-future-fantasy and we'll go, "Yeah, I saw that coming." Compared with my predecessors, I can say this for myself: hypersonic missiles, hyperbolic inflation, instantaneous disinformation—the things that terrify me are pretty cool, when you say them out loud.

I bet heaven's new arrivals are annoying. "Dysentery was it, Grandad? Sounds enthralling. You know, I met the maker in a head-on locomotive collision. Boiler exploded right in front of me. I flew half a mile from the cab."

For those of us alive today, we'll probably join those conversations sounding awesome and pathetic at the same time.

"Well, let's see, I started out as an electric lineman. That was dangerous, so I took a desk job, up until an algorithm replaced me, then I bounced into gig work, but the robots were cuter than I was. I got a contract job at the steel mill, right before they moved the forge work to the moon, which was nice, actually. My back gave me a lot less trouble, up there. Almost died when the bunk dome buckled. Lived through that, just to bite the big one back on Earth, the first day of my Good Behavior vacation."

"Spaceship accident?"

"No, it was a profu dog that did it. I forgot how to swallow in Earth gravity."

So how does one survive in a world whose nearest future is beyond our imagination? We can join the New Buddhists (newddhists?) and practice hyperradical acceptance, or, maybe the better answer is to get out in front of the wave. Be the change. For myself, I just bought a certificate that puts my name on a big lunar crater. For a nominal fee, you're welcome to crash at my place.