As anyone who’s extremely online knows, the most longstanding internet holiday tradition is web sites – in particular gaming magazines – posting annoying fake stories on April Fools’ Day.
But the second oldest internet holiday tradition is unqualified bloggers making baseless predictions about the year ahead at New Year’s. It makes for a fun parlor game in the comments and provides a ready source of material to compensate for the slowing of the news cycle during the great feasts.
Yesterday being the actual holiday, I’ve put off making a prediction post until the day after. It’s not like I missed much yesterday.
With the preamble out of the way, it’s time to dust off my trusty orb and get to pondering what’s in store for us in 2024.
Pope Francis’ Health Worsens
But to the frustration of MadTrads online, the Supreme Pontiff will hang on despite intensifying medical woes. Perceiving their window of opportunity closing, the subversive elements within the Church’s hierarchy will attempt to ram through a magisterial document that advances their agenda.
They will succeed – partly – in passing the kind of reversal the fake news media and Catholic Twitter thought Fiducia supplicans was. However, the dimming of their intellects due to sin will provide a resolution to the crisis. The turgid Church-Speak in which it will be written will make the document unintelligible, unenforceable, self-contradictory, or all three. These deficiencies will be compounded by the fact multiple older and higher magisterial decrees overrule it, making the new doc null and void.
Look for this doctrinal mess to pivot away from the gay stuff, which flopped last year, for yet another attempt to get a foot in the door on the women’s ordination front. As others have observed, no one has cared much about the womynpriest – AKA cosplaying witch – issue since the 70s. But with a dwindling yet still powerful contingent of the hierarchy still stuck in that decade, look for them to approve “deaconesses” or some such anachronism.
Folks like Bishop Barron and Jimmy Akin will clarify that the expanded liturgical role for women is a lay ministry separate from Holy Orders. They will be right, but high-profile sacramental abuses will happen anyway. Most bishops will just ignore the document’s guidelines, and life in most parishes will go on.
The Housing Crisis Gets Better
Before it gets worse.
Rents and home prices will finally trend downward in the first quarter of this year. Millennials who’ve been clawing to get into the housing market will get some relief. But heartless megacorps like Black Rock will take advantage of the better rates to swoop in and scoop up even more once-privately owned land.
Because in the words of Lex Luthor’s dad, “It’s the one thing they’re not making any more of.”
The GOP Keeps Control of Congress
Congress’ job approval ratings may be at historic lows, but if the past few years have taught us anything, it’s that public opinion doesn’t matter in a democracy.
After blowing what should have been a red wave election by their obstinate refusal to give their voters what they want, the GOP was left clinging to a congressional majority by its fingernails. Despite lurching from one politcal disgrace to another, Republicans will keep or increase their control of the legislature this November.
How? Simple math, for the most part. Constituents win reelection close to 90% of the time. This year, about twice as many Democrat lawmakers are retiring as Republicans. Many of those seats are expected to flip, which should drag the GOP across the goal line.
If you want to get even more cynical, those who follow the Global American Empire’s foreign meddling warn that the war machine has been put in standby mode till after the elections. Since the GOP’s main role in the two-faction ruling class is to be the War Party, expect them to consolidate their majority so they can bomb some goat country on behalf of the powers that be.
That’s about all I can stomach for now. Keep your eyes peeled over the course of the year to check my orb’s accuracy.
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