Johannes Kepler first used “Vulgar Era” to distinguish dates on the Christian calendar from the regnal year typically used in national law.
In an utterly repulsive paean to the Tiny Tyrant, Johnny Enlow at Charisma News made this little announcement:
Trump’s God-given assignment is so powerful and extensive that I was shown we will be known nationally as “before Trump” and “after Trump.” In fact, the whole world will be known as “before Trump” and “after Trump.” As a nation, this presidency is being used by God to save us from a systemic “gangrene” of corruption that was so entrenched we would not have survived moving forward. Evil was entrenched in hidden, behind the scenes, power positions that were now humanly impossible to overcome. We needed help, we needed rescuing and God has sounded His Trump and come to the rescue. It is not Trump rescuing us. It is God rescuing us.
All I can say is that I’m very glad I have not yet eaten today. If you have a cast iron stomach, and about twenty new irony meters, you can read the rest of the toxic garbage here.
I could see one reason we might need a new numbering system. I’m assuming that the AT calendar starts when the nukes go off. Nothing gets out that hard to reach evil like nuclear fire.
Fair point.
Dave, I had the same thought exactly.
It is not a happy thought.
So Trump replaces Jesus as a symbolic time mark then?
Huh. Odd sort of “Christianity”you’re espousing there Johnny -- or sadly too ordinary in terms of widely held in the USA anyhow more like.
Wonder how Johnny Enlow feels about using Common Era / Before Common Era in place of Anno Domini and BC. (My Latin may be a bit off there?)
In some ways I’ve previously thought it could make sense to make a new dating system around some key changes that do mark our technologically advanced if socially now somewhat regressing era of history with points such as :
1) The Lunar landing by Armstrong and Aldrin, (Before-&-After Apollo maybe?)
2) The feminist movement making half our species actually more equal(~ish but working on it?) (The publication of Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch in 1970 maybe? Are the abbrievs BF and FF taken yet? ;-) )
3) The invention / adoption of the internet -- albeit that’s a pretty fuzzy, hard to really determine date?
Or maybe the first atomic Bomb or 1950 for close enough to round numbers date fro modern world and already the geological current day? Or something else?
Trump’s presidency? Not likely (?) -- and only for the reason (#1) Dave, ex-Kwisatz Haderach suggests I agree though really hope it won’t come to that.
My two suggestions for a new calendar “zero” would be Sputnik, marking the beginning of the Space Age (and also being a reference to one of my favorite manga titles, Battle Angel Alita), and the other would be Thursday, January 1, 1970: Unix Time.
Same as Charly and Dave. Like in Germany we have a cesura with 33-45.
Day Zero IMHO should be July 16 1945, a moment that will be radioactively etched in the geological record.
@StevoR 1950 is defined as the present day for the purposes of Carbon dating. That seems as good a year zero as any to me.