Subjunctive is a mood not a tense. And it is experiencing something of a revival in English. You can have subjunctive in the past as well as in the future. A

Subjunctive is a mood not a tense. And it is experiencing something of a revival in English. You can have subjunctive in the past as well as in the future. All languages are ridiculous to varying degrees. Why do tables have gender? Why do the French continue to write final t's and s's when they stopped pronouncing them two centuries ago? Why must adjectives agree with their nouns? Why do many languages not have any way of easily referring to someone without mentioning their sex. Why do declensions exist when auxiliary words can perform the same functions?