Beto chows down

Back in the 1940s, Robert A. Heinlein, the "Dean of American science fiction writers," put together an outline of American history for the next two hundred years. It was basically a framework on which to hang a number of related short stories and novels utilizing the same background. This "Future History" series, after being completed, was published in a single volume a quarter-century later as The Past through Tomorrow. A number of commentators, beginning with the critic Algis Budrys, have noted some remarkable congruences with actual events. From the vantage point of 1940, Heinlein predicted a social upheaval during the '60s (which he called the "Crazy Years"), the rise of the religious right a few years later, and the effective abandonment of the space program, with private entrepreneurs taking over leadership in manned space travel in the 21st century, just to mention just a few points.

But there was one minor point that seemed really unlikely. In one of the volumes (I believe in the opening pages of the novel Methuselah's Children), Heinlein made an offhand reference to dirt-eating becoming a fad. This was easy to shrug off. While a lot of crazy things have come and gone, dirt-eating was not one of them. I mean, people just aren't that silly, are they? Well, it appears that Beto O'Rourke has brought this prophecy to life. Breitbart reports that, after being defeated by Ted Cruz, Beto made his way to New Mexico, where he ate a portion of some kind of magic dirt supposedly possessing "regenerative powers." It appears that he also took some home for the family. Now, we can be sure, Beto, being a public figure and the (or make that "a") Great White Hope of the Democrats for 2020, will find a number of imitators following his lead as regards the holy dirt. We can only hope the supply holds out, so that all the leftists and Beto acolytes will not end up being disappointed. We can only conclude that Robert Heinlein was a much more accurate and profound prophet than anyone ever guessed. Who else, in a relatively sane era, would have projected that an adult male running for president could make a meal of dirt? And that, as somebody recently said, is America in 2019.