April 13, 2021

This morning, a friend posted the following observation on Facebook: "Day 42. Still no socialism. No one has come for your guns. Planned Parenthood is not located in Starbucks. And we still have cops." I offered the following to temper her apparent optimism that those in the grips of these fears might cease and desist anytime soon:

Back in 1888, a schoolboy from rural Kentucky realized that the digits of that year, taken as a mathematical sum, added up to 25, and that 25 is the square of 5 (i.e., 5 x 5). Having stared at the sun a bit too long, he saw a numerological significance in this, and let it be known to anyone who would listen that going forward, important milestones would come in, after, around, because of, etc. etc. multiples or sums of 5. The prophecy caught on with a few of his neighbors, who had also been staring at the sun a bit too long, and they in turn spread it to friends and family members, until a sort of cabal calling itself the Rule of Fivers coalesced. Nothing was heard of this cabal after New Years Day 1889, until early this year, when rumors started circulating at the fringes of the dark web that the Rule of Fivers cabal had been resuscitated, though some claimed it had never fully died, but had instead become a secret subgroup of another secret group, which they refused to name because it was secret (duh!). According to this rebooted—or re-emergent—Rule of Fiver prophecy, now referred to as R5, since the digits of the year 2021 add up to 5 (2 + 0 + 2 + 1), important milestones could happen at any time during the year. It's felt that they're more likely to occur on days mathematically related to 5, though, viz. any multiple of 5 (20, 45, 165, etc.) or any day whose digits add up to 5 (e.g., day 131 of the year, May 11th). Some extend the principle to the hours of a given day, e.g., the 5th or 10th hour of, say, day 42 of the Biden presidency. Due to the influence of QAnon, the R5 faithful are now reportedly anticipating Donald Trump's reinstatement in the White House at some TBD date or time of day tied in some way to the number 5, which is to say, any time you could name. They also reportedly look forward to mass executions of libs, pedophiles, etc. (in groups of 5, 10, etc.), and five-for-one sales of AR-15s in Hobby Lobbies across the nation. Stay tuned...