When the Consensus is betting “Things Shake Up” and the Counter-Consensus knee-jerks “No They Don’t,” what does ZANGO JANGO say?

ZANGO JANGO says: “You Ain’t Seen NOTHING Yet.”

Take a look at the chart below (as always, data for your agents to munch is on the flip side). That red line is the frustration index for uncohorted Vails in the 150- to 350-year-old demographic, broken down by birth order and plotted against the blue line, the reciprocal of ambition times longing for that same group over the past two thousand years. The spike this week is impressive, but so far so standard.

But Zango, you’re asking, what’s that yellow line doing there? Well, puppies, that’s the index of willful denial for latterborn Staid parents in the same age group. Specifically: it’s the number of heartbeats per day they spend trying not to think about what they’re thinking about. This week: SPROIING! Forgive my vulgarity, but it looks like it’s going to take a lot of spoon-passing for “the still center” to “clear the mind”!

But now take a gander at the CORRELATION (see the green callouts).

There’s a reason I ran this graph out to two thousand years. Because when did those two factors sync up last? In the Age of War, that’s when: just before major intergender hostilities broke out.

Puppies, we’re looking at a leading indicator of chaos.

So, what’s the BIG BET?

Well, this is where half of you snapcakes cancel your subscriptions . . . because ZANGO’s about to overturn the oldest rule in the business, the fresh-waxed baby-bettor’s first-learned maxim: never bet against your own mental coherence.

Oh, believe me, JANGO knows the arguments for the rule. Yes: if you’re likely to go loopy, that’s already priced into your rep. Yes: people are notoriously bad at predicting self-default. Yes: the only way to win is to lose, because the emotional upheaval of ontological collapse will swamp any trifling gains you might eke out from the successful wager. That’s all true: under normal conditions.

But THAT WAS THEN, puppies. What’s coming down the sluice is such a wild ride, anyone who tells you who’ll be up or down in a month is chewing spent glowtubes. No one knows.

But I’ll tell you one thing JANGO knows:

You might be as solid and stable and centered as the most self-satisfied Long Conversationalist who ever passed a spoon.

You might be as glory-crowned and praise-sung and glad-hearted as the cockiest bangle-daddy who ever slammed an opponent to the mats.

You might be cozily embedded in a flock of beloveds who weep themselves to sleep each night just from the pure joy of knowing you.