Foreword

No one really knows for sure how the Crazy Years started. There are theories, sure, but when it comes right down to it that’s all they really are. You can point to drugs, or free love, or poor education or a million other things and say “This marks the start of the decline of the American civilization." But the truth is no one will ever really know how or why the Crazy Years came to be.

Most historians can’t even agree on the exact time frame for the Crazy Years. John Wilkes, in his book Through the Looking Glass: A Psychological History of 20th Century America, places the beginning of the Crazy Years at the Great Depression of ’29, while Susan Reynolds, in her authoritative book America: What Went Wrong?, postulates that the Crazy Years didn’t really begin until the 1980’s, and lasted until the Universal Declaration of Independence and the Rights and Responsibilities of Mankind were put into effect in 2038.

Professor Jon Summers, Ph. D., recognized throughout the world as the authority on the subject, is quoted by the New York Times as telling students at the commencement ceremony of 2174 that “the period of history known as the Crazy Years was merely the inevitable result of thousands of years of mental aberration in Western Civilization going unchecked.”

He went on to say that the fundamental problems that brought about the Crazy Years correlated directly to fundamental errors in human understanding of human behavior, which actually precipitated the eventual and total demise of Western Civilization. Fortunately, the demise and total downfall of our civilization was never fully realized.

Despite all arguments to the contrary, history shows quite clearly that the end of the Crazy Years and the beginning of the world’s first true civilization began in 2015, when U.S. President Greggory Smith, under urging from hundreds of millions of American citizens, passed into law the International Non-Interference Act. The INI Act, as it came to be known, prohibited the United States government from interfering in the internal affairs of foreign nations. History shows that this act marks the beginning of the evolution of third-world countries from small, warring nations to a vast network of wealthy, interdependent countries, and made possible a new world order of peace, prosperity and stability.

But it is not within the scope of this work to argue such trivialities as time tables or reference points. Rather, this information is provided merely as an introduction for the reader who is wholly unfamiliar with the era known as the Crazy Years. For a more detailed account of the events leading up to and responsible for the Crazy Years, see the bibliography at the back of this book.

Justin Whitehill
Cambridge University
May 17, 2197