After three years of blogging, AWOL Civilization is taking a sabbatical. In the foreseeable future, I will be devoting my time to other pursuits, most notably the completion of a new novel. The website will remain on line, to serve as an archive, and a source of information about my literary works. The contact form will continue to function. (UPDATE, 7/12/2010: Comments now closed on all posts.)

I would like to thank the readers of AWOL, particularly those of you who have shared your thoughts in comments and emails. Your participation and encouragement have been an indispensable source of inspiration.

What better time than Independence Day to take stock of our situation. There is no doubt in my mind that upheaval awaits us. The United States, Canada, and most of Europe have been overrun by a leftist wrecking crew who seek nothing but ruin for the remnant of Western civilization. The current trajectory can only result in fierce conflict.

It is for each of us to decide how and when to act; what steps to take to preserve our way of life. Ultimately, we must answer the same question that others in similar circumstances have faced since time immemorial: What is the price of liberty and independence?

I remind myself that a civilization rises and falls by the strength of its spirit. That spirit lives and breathes in the intellectual and cultural realms—philosophy, religion, literature, art, music, and theater/cinema. This is easy to forget when concentrating on the daily rough-and-tumble of political battles. The governmental arena is important, and we must certainly fight tooth and nail for every possible advantage. That being said, victory ultimately is won by the force that succeeds in dominating the culture. No one knows this better than the Obamunists, who confidently rode into power on the crest of the post-modern, neo-Marxist tsunami that has inundated the West for half a century.

Good luck to all of us.

Gary Wolf
New Mexico, USA

This is the nineteenth installment in a continuing series. Here is what life will be like in the year 2020 if our civilization continues to go AWOL:

• Association of Body-Mass Index Victims gives its Disproportionate Posterior Index Lifetime Achievement award to Michelle Obama
• All U.S. aircraft carriers and half the destroyer fleet out of commission due to multitude of pregnant sailors
• Fighter jet crashes because of lovers’ quarrel between pilot and navigator
• Racial Balance Czar forbids further influx of Caucasians into border states
• U.S. conveys official apology to North Korea for decades of “slander and violence against a benevolent, peaceful, and progressive society”
• A record 754 bloggers apprehended last week and exiled to reeducation camps in Guam after being caught practicing journalism without a license
• CNN announces “historic” occasion: For the first time, undocumented Americans outnumber citizens
• Immigration to U.S. from Northern European countries halted pending investigation of this population’s tendency to commit hate crimes
• Arabic becomes official language of Great Britain; English still permitted during two-year transition period
• French navy seizes ship smuggling weapons to Muslim insurgents in Marseilles; Israel issues condemnation
• Annual federal budget reaches 500% of GDP; President Holder convenes special commission to “overcome, once and for all, the Bush legacy”
• First retroactive income tax goes into effect; targeted are selfish profits made during the Reagan-Bush years of capitalist expropriation
• Average professional sports game lasts almost six hours due to proliferation of advertising and booth review
• American League changes its name to Humanity Baseball League following settlement of national-origin-harassment lawsuit brought by non-American players
• At World Cup in Zimbabwe, victorious Brazilian team eaten by fans; U.S. ambassador-at-large Bill Clinton praises the “spontaneous overflow of togetherness and brotherhood”
• Kevin Jennings, head of the Sexual Health Administration, announces that all heterosexual liaisons now subject to approval by local advisory boards
• Shocker: Barack Obama admits being the illegitimate love-child of Helen Thomas and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright

Would you care to add your own headlines?

[Note: To see earlier installments of “Headlines from the Year 2020," click the All Fiction link on the sidebar (located under Orwellian Snapshots).]

[UPDATE, 6/28/2010: A fascinating article in the Weekly Standard describes the intimate connection between British Petroleum and the Obama administration, as well as the company’s long history of advocacy on behalf of the Green movement. Hat tip: View From the Right.]

After two months of dithering in the face of one of the greatest ecological disasters in recent history, B. Hussein Obama last week deigned to formally address his subjects on the matter. The speech represented a new summit of the arrogant, community-organizer, false-credential, Chicago-thug style to which we have become accustomed. So nauseating was the performance that even some of his lapdogs in the establishment press—such as Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann—in a fit of temporary insanity forgot that they were referring to His Royal Eminence The First Black President. The dobermans turned on their master, unleashing a torrent of criticism that would have prompted cries of “racism” to emerge from their vocal chords, had the same words emanated from a spokesman of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.

There has been speculation aplenty in the blogosphere regarding the driving force behind B. Hussein’s behavior during the entire oil-spill crisis. Is his dithering and ineptitude simply an element of the Left’s efforts to bring America to its knees? Is this an instance of “never let a crisis go to waste” on a grand scale? A pretext for nationalizing the oil companies? For passing the Cap & Trade monstrosity? Or are we looking at pure incompetence?

Surely the answer incorporates all of these elements. Rather than try to pinpoint the relative weights, I will simply add more fuel to the fire by focusing on one aspect of the leftist psyche that comes into play in situations like this: The profound divorce from reality; from the actual, real-life, everyday functioning of the world.

The leftist is wed to his ideology. This subservience molds and conditions his every thought, action, and verbal expression. Any problem or challenge must be assigned an oppressor and matching victim, so that blame and punishment can follow. There are no chance occurrences in this fantasy world; in his eyes, every debacle is the result of nefarious planning, or, more to the point, of a conspiracy.

In the realm of energy, the bad guys are the oil companies, Western consumers, and, ultimately, the human race. This is the prism through which any oil-related event is viewed. There are no nuances; no such thing as better or worse oil companies, better or worse government regulation, or better or worse locations and conditions for drilling. And certainly no such thing as human error on the part of the purported enemy.

This means that when a disaster such as the Gulf oil spill occurs, the leftist has no mental template in which he can process the flow of information and formulate a coherent, rational response. In other words, he lacks the intellectual tools needed to solve a concrete problem.

The desperately-needed response from day one boiled down to plugging the hole. That is the sum total of the presidential challenge at the moment of crisis. Sorry, no need for victims, bad guys, commissions, Nobel prizes, czars, or condemnations of “corporate greed.” All of that can come later, when the emergency has passed, and it can be managed by others. Also at a later date we can deal with national energy strategy and corrections in regulatory policy. The president’s job: plug the damn hole.

The irony screams to the heavens: Our leader belongs to the party with Green written all over it. The people who saturate us 24/7 with environmental hysteria cannot protect us from real harm. These are the people who know full well how to don sackcloth and ashes and shriek their jeremiads about New York being underwater; who feel no compunction about introducing legislation certain to cripple the already-floundering economy in order to eliminate some imaginary threat to the health of the planet. They know how to fly battalions of bureaucrats to Copenhagen to bloviate over their beloved Global Warming, to moan about polar bears and ice caps, but when it comes to real humans watching their environment and livelihood go down the drain, well, it’s their fault anyway, for having such big cars.

In a recent post, I proposed that we, the anti-Obamunist camp, desist from playing the game of public-opinion polls. I would like to add another proposal: Cease using the term “liberal” to refer to the opposition.

Using this word bestows an undeserved upgrade. Every time it leaves one’s mouth, the entire movement represented by such luminaries as B. Hussein Obama, Hillary Clinton, Michael Moore, and Nancy Pelosi receives an unintended compliment. This is because the ideology of these people bears only the slightest resemblance to what was known in a bygone era as “liberal.”

What does liberal really mean? The most basic connotation is liberality in overall conduct, a sort of generosity, as in “he gave a liberal portion of ice cream to each child.” Well then, you say, what about the Left’s incessant doling out of goodies to innumerable recipients? Isn’t this liberal?

The answer is no. A case could be made that the liberals of yesteryear really did behave with true generosity. Over the decades, however, this aspect has perished. One has only to consider the now-routine printing of non-existent money (i.e., from pure debt) to spend on political payoffs, such as the hodgepodge of bogus “stimulus” projects. This is a type of theft, nothing more. The generosity is an illusion; a sleight-of-hand.

The same rule applies to the “liberality” of open borders. Like the distribution of artificial money, it appears to be generous, but in fact it is merely a tool for the imposition of socialism. In true leftist fashion, the “oppressed,” in this case illegal aliens, are selected as clients for the sole purpose of furthering an agenda. I ask myself: Are there no poor people in Arizona who suffer from the lack of enforcement of our immigration laws? Doesn’t the “working class” have its rights infringed and its standard of living reduced? Why do the “liberals” not care? Answer: They are not liberal.

This is nothing new. I found in Gibbon an interesting case of liberality decaying into theft and corruption. Under the reign of the Roman emperor Caracalla (211-217 AD),

a most important edict….communicated to all the free inhabitants of the empire the name and privileges of Roman citizens. [Caracalla’s] unbounded liberality flowed not, however, from the sentiments of a generous mind; it was the sordid result of avarice, and will naturally be illustrated by some observations of the finances of that state.

Gibbon goes on to describe a situation of insolvency and waste that could easily be a summary of the Obama administration’s budgetary policy.

Another erstwhile meaning of liberal was a belief in liberty—as the very word liberal implies. Remember the good old days when liberals asserted that freedom of speech meant freedom of speech for everyone, even non-leftists? Fast forward to the contemporary political arena. Who but the would-be inheritors of liberalism are the champions of affirmative action and political correctness, perhaps the greatest challenge to civil liberties and equal protection of the law this country has ever faced? Who sets up Stalinist “human rights commissions” to squelch freedom of expression? Who wants to institute the “Fairness Doctrine”? The president from which party complains that the information sources of the citizenry are too diversified?

A key litmus test is a person’s attitude to equality. For the true liberal, everyone should have the same rights under the law, with the same chance to pursue their goals. This is known as equality of opportunity. For the leftist, equality means absolute equality, or, as it is often called, equality of results. In other words, all humans should have the same attributes, own the same property, benefit from the same credentials, receive the same grades in college, etc.

Among Obamunists, the choice is always equality of results. The truly liberal notions have been purged.

Liberal also used to signify a belief in economic liberty; that is, the free market. Adam Smith was considered a liberal. In Europe, even today, the word has largely preserved this meaning. In France, the term libéral tumbles from the mouth of a leftist with the appropriate expression of disgust. After all, he’s referring to a greedy capitalist, a lackey of American imperialism.

Lastly, the liberal of old did not consider it a matter of principle to try and degrade his country’s national security. One could be liberal and support a strong military, and even serve with great distinction (as did JFK, for example). Once again, those who campaign ceaselessly against the foundations of national defense—not to mention the traitors who reveal classified material—are leftists, through and through.

Let us strike “liberal” from our vocabulary, unless referring to the various authentic meanings of the word. Our Obamunist adversaries are leftist revolutionaries, pure and simple. As Thomas Bertonneau and others have shown, the contemporary leftist subscribes to a form of gnostic religion that is based on an irrational rejection of reality. It is thoroughly totalitarian, and has nothing to do with liberality, freedom, liberty, or an interest in the well-being of mankind.

[Quote taken from Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (vol. I), New York, Heritage Press, 1946, pp 123-4.]

I recently had the opportunity to spend a day in Seattle. I was surprised to find that Claudius, the emperor of Rome some two millennia ago, had found new employment. At the Seattle Art Museum, he helps remind us of the cultural decay into which our civilization has fallen.

This is because one cannot avoid comparing the small collection of magnificent antiquities (of which his bust forms a part) with the bulk of the exhibits, which constitute one of the most revolting displays of bad taste to ever grace the walls and floors of an American museum.

Normally, in a major city, the “elite” feel some vague obligation to hang a respectable gallery of paintings from the grand styles. Thus for example in the San Diego art museum—a monument to mediocrity and Leftist chic if there ever was one—you will at least find a few Impressionists and post-Impressionists, enough to assuage the urge to violence that overtakes even a peaceful soul while passing the office of the curator.

But no such relief awaits the visitor in Seattle. I counted two paintings and no sculpture to represent the entire period from 1700 to the beginning of complete abstraction. Nothing from the nineteenth century, no Impressionists, no Hopper, no Eakins, not so much as a third-rate Cubist. As if art had disappeared for two and a half centuries.

Ahh, but then it reappears, and with a vengeance. The harbinger could be seen outside, over the entranceway:

These words refer to a special exhibition, a compendium of depraved detritus related to Andy Warhol and to a local rock star, Kurt Cobain, who committed suicide in 1994. Cobain, whose first band boasted the picturesque name “Fecal Matter,” was a pioneer in the Grunge movement (I’m not making this up). According to the museum, this illustrious trailblazer is “arguably Seattle’s greatest cultural export of the past two decades.” What, greater than Starbucks?

Such fascinating things one can learn at an art museum! And I thought it was a place to behold Rembrandt and Renoir. Silly me.

So getting back to the sign above the entrance: The contents of the museum were indeed full of emotions; the building is a paean to the feelingization of art. In other words, I vomit, you watch. Which is precisely what an “artist” named Sam Gilliam did for us:

Sam must have eaten at an Italian restaurant, judging by the excess of marinara, though apparently some avocado is present—could it be guacamole?

This work is described as an exemplar of the “Post-Minimalist” school. Given that Minimalism is itself a farcical rejection of art, what is the significance of adding the “post”? What will be next, SuperPostMinimalBigMoneyArtScamInYourFace-ism?

Continuing the maximization of the minimal, here’s one that belongs to …[clears throat]… a “seminal group of sculpture”:

No, you’re not hallucinating. It really is nothing more than two slabs of wood. A seminal con job, I would say.

Then of course the obligatory white on white:

What do you make of this seminal aluminum foil:

Recalling that Seattle is Microsoft’s home turf, perhaps it symbolizes the impact upon brain cells of staring at a computer monitor for eight hours straight.

Let us not neglect the museum’s spacious lobby, which has this lovely “installation” suspended overhead:

Could it be symbolic of the creeping socialism of the Obama regime, as it takes over the auto industry? Umm…not quite. I learned that this exhibit, called Inopportune: Stage One, is a “large-scale installation work consisting of a meticulous arrangement of life-size cars and multichannel tubes that seem to blow up in sequence, symbolizing a series of car explosions.”

At that point, my brain was about to “blow up in sequence.” I turned toward the window overlooking First Avenue, and finally beheld something artistic:

[Note: Below is the twenty-third episode of the TV series Michelle Knows Best. For background information, read this post. For other episodes, click the "Michelle Knows Best" link in the sidebar. Enjoy...]

We join Michelle and Barack aboard the presidential jet, Air Force One, as they fly over Phoenix, Arizona. The airplane is in a steep climb. The president and first lady are standing behind the seats of the pilot and copilot, hanging on.

PILOT

That was too close for comfort, Mr. President. I can’t guarantee that we’ll be able to pull out of a dive like that again.

MICHELLE

He’s right, Barry. We could’ve all been killed. Then Joe Biden would be president, and that prissy little wife of his would be first lady. Ugh.

BARACK

All right, all right. I just wanted to get close enough to the Arizona state legislature so that they could actually see my face as we buzz them.

PILOT

Where to, sir?

BARACK

Grand Canyon.

The First Couple leave the cockpit and enter the main cabin of Air Force One. Waiting for them is the secretary-general of the UN, Ban Ki-moon. Ban beams a broad smile, and extends his arms to each side in a “here I am” gesture. Long applause from studio audience. They all shake hands, exchange greetings, and take their seats.

MICHELLE

Thanks for waiting, Ban. We’re finally on our way to the Grand Canyon.

BAN

Excellent. So what is this secret plan you were hinting at when you invited me on this trip?

MICHELLE

In a nutshell, we’re taking the Grand Canyon away from Arizona.

BAN

[stroking chin] Interesting…

BARACK

Arizona acted stupidly. But hey, you’re bound to have a rogue state now and then when there’s fifty-seven of them.

MICHELLE

We’re going to redraw the state border, so that the Grand Canyon is detached. That’s where you come in.

BAN

How is that?

MICHELLE

We want to turn the area into a World Heritage site, but with full sovereignty in the hands of the UN.

BARACK

You’ll bring in UN soldiers, to maintain order. All those racists in Arizona might just organize a posse, and literally ride in with Sheriff Joe Arpaio leading the way. Of course we’ll send U.S. troops to help, but it would be easier politically if your boys took care of the rabble—if you know what I mean. [nervous titter from audience]

BAN

Naturally.

MICHELLE

It’s a win-win situation. Arizona is punished, the UN helps to fight American racism, land is protected from Global Warming, and America shows that it can share one of its top attractions with the entire world, instead of selfishly hogging it all for itself. For once, I can be proud of my country.

BAN

This is fantastic!

MICHELLE

Idaho has also been acting up, so we’re thinking of doing the same thing with Yellowstone National Park.

BARACK

Umm…Yellowstone is in Nevada, dear.

MICHELLE

Well, whatever.

BARACK

[Pointing out the window] Look, it’s the Grand Canyon.

MICHELLE

That’s the Grand Canyon? It’s just a big hole in the ground. [chuckle from audience] Barry, are you sure that anyone in Arizona will care what we do with it?

BARACK

Absolutely. It has great historical significance.

BAN

Weren’t millions of Native Americans massacred there?

BARACK

Wow, Ban, you really know your American history! Yes, just after Custer’s last stand, two million women and children were tortured and then pushed off the cliffs. Even today, hikers uncover skeletons that haven’t been cleared out yet. That’s why white people go on pilgrimages to the Grand Canyon.

BAN

What a terrible nation. Are you sure you don’t want to transfer sovereignty of the entire country to the UN?

BARACK

Patience, my boy, patience…

Applause from audience. Theme song and credits.

ANNOUNCER: Tune in next week for another zany adventure of Michelle Knows Best.

Fade out; cut to commercial for bone-detection equipment.

These people will save us from Bible-thumping redneck racist reactionaries:

Talk about the fox guarding the henhouse. John Brennan, the administration’s top counter-terrorism official, tells us that jihad is a “legitimate tenet of Islam.” In a wide-ranging apology for Muslim terror, he asserted that the word “jihad” should not be used;

nor do we describe our enemy as ‘jihadists’ or ‘Islamists’ because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one’s community, and there is nothing holy or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women and children.

Needless to say, he also deplores any reference to the religion of the attackers as well as the use of the word terrorism, and blames the violence against American and other targets on “political, economic, and social forces.”

For a summary of the speech, see this article from Fox News. For a more in-depth analysis, see the pieces in Gates of Vienna and Hyscience. For an earlier story on Brennan’s other shenanigans, see this post in FrontPage. If you can stomach it, read the entire speech by Brennan here.

I was just in the process of meditating, this Memorial Day, on the ultimate sacrifice. The fallen have died to preserve our freedom and way of life. Meanwhile, the usurper in the White House and his cohorts are currently engaged in the dismantling of the United States. How many more will die?

Sooner or later, the Obamunist machine will reach a critical point, beyond which it will either burn itself out and be replaced, or morph into a totalitarian monster of inconceivable dimensions. To forestall the latter scenario, the forces of reason must step into the breach.

The forces of reason will only be able to succeed if our minds are primed with ideas and principles. Playing the game of character and public opinion—the game of flattering the plebeian mob—will only work to our disfavor. By “character” I mean exhortations of the following kind: conservatives are nicer than leftists; conservatives give more money to charity; fewer Republican politicians are corrupt/embroiled in scandal; there really are black people at the Tea Parties; etc.

It is shocking how much time and effort is wasted on this senseless banter. Sometimes I find myself getting dragged into the mess, and have to splash some cold water on my face. Off the top of my head I can think of half a dozen excellent blogs or news websites with incisive analysis, wit, and integrity. I have no objection if they note that such-and-such a poll took place. But they insist on hanging on the result of every poll as if Moses were descending from Mt. Sinai. Then comes the battle of the polls; ours versus theirs.

We are far, far beyond the stage where participating in the cult of public opinion can be of benefit. The deck is stacked against us. This is because mass democracy, reaching ever more degraded forms, feeds precisely on the type of sugar-coated poison provided by the Left. We cannot hope to emerge victorious, in the court of public opinion, by competing against the reckless socialist spending spree: more goodies from the public treasury; endless schemes to add more people and groups to the rolls of government subsidy.

It would seem that a key goal of public-opinion analysis is to adjust political strategy so that the next poll turns out to be more favorable. But if more than half the country is so foolhardy, ignorant, lazy, or vindictive that they vote Democrat, do we dare fashion our platform according to the beliefs these same people hold on any given issue at any given time?

Another problem is that in the new era of strong-arm politics in Washington, such adjustments are illusory. Polling and counter-polling belong to a bygone era. They can have relevance only if some link exists between words and deeds, between proposals and policy, as there generally was before the advent of the current administration.

We must reject all discussion that is not centered on facts, logic, and ideas. Anything else is a distraction at best, and capitulation at worst. Arguing over the ethnic composition of tea-party attendees is a non-starter. So is attempting to outdo the Left at its own game, as when various calls are heard for being “inclusive” within the ranks of the Republican Party, to accommodate official victim groups. This is rubbish. We are never going to be loved; let us at least be respected.

Respect is earned by articulating real ideas and principles, tortuous as the process might be. The utility of doing so is not always apparent. This is because the population of the U.S., Britain, France, and the remainder of the West is like a heroin addict, willing to do anything to obtain just one more fix of easy money; self-flattering concern about some species of beast; androgynous and politically-correct cinema; some unimaginable permutation of “fairness”; sentimental pronouncements on the progress of society; new scapegoats among the productive sectors—anything but reality.

We must be standing ready with the methadone treatment, manning the emergency room and the ambulance. We cannot be offering hashish and cocaine alongside the methadone, to let the addict try something “not as bad.” It has to be cold turkey.

No one can deny that we are living in interesting (read: confused and unstable) times. The Obama-Pelosi-Reid slow-motion coup d’état now transpiring in Washington has sparked anew the question lurking in the mind of every sober observer: Are we headed for an era of darkness and civilizational collapse the likes of which have seldom been witnessed, or will there be a resurgence of intellect and culture, permitting us to apply the brakes moments before the collectivist locomotive plunges over the cliff?

It would be a good idea, whatever the outcome, to prepare a time capsule; to preserve for posterity a brief and synoptic record of our demise. Let it serve as a testament for future generations, whether it be just one or two ahead of us (as in the happier scenario), or the hundredth generation to come, which finally succeeds in emerging from the abyss.

Without further ado, here are some suggestions for the time capsule. Feel free to critique them or to add your own.

The TV commercials from the Super Bowl. Never have we seen such a succinct compendium of raging idiocy as we did in these sound bites of cretin triumphalism. A veritable work of genius it was, cramming into a relatively short time period the entire gamut of our intellectual atrophy.

A possible side-effect of including this item is that an historian of the distant future might conclude from viewing our TV commercials that over half of the U.S. population in 2010 was black, and that they comprised the core of the middle and upper classes. Ahh, to be a fly on the wall when our poor historian and his colleagues attempt to reconcile this “evidence” with the incessant cries of racism in which our public square is immersed.

“An Inconvenient Truth” + Climategate emails. These must be presented in tandem. Here we have a major public figure, Al Gore, a former vice-president of the United States, disseminating one of the most depraved and superstitious pieces of scare-mongering since the Salem witch trials.

The infamous emails exposing the soft underbelly of the Global Warming hoax may be somewhat superfluous for the time capsule; future generations will undoubtedly look upon the AGW hysteria as we look upon past prophecies of impending doom. But still, the emails are a particularly pungent and concise exhibit of our contemporary brand of folly.

Jeremiah Wright’s g.-d.-America speech. This is the first of two items representing the Obama phenomenon. I can’t think of anything more revealing of the Obamunist agenda than the shenanigans transpiring on a regular basis during the twenty years of B. Hussein’s attendance at a “church” led by one of the nation’s leading practitioners of victimary race-pimping.

Anita Dunn’s Mao-Mao speech. This is Obama item number two. Let us recall: The communications chief of the White House publicly praises, and at length, the most prolific mass murderer and enslaver of men in the history of the Earth, Mao Tse-tung.

The down side to including this item is that our incredulous descendants may repack the time capsule and put it back in the ground, convinced that it’s a forgery.

“Up Your Alley” in San Francisco. [Warning: linked images are disturbing, and not work-safe.] The blogger Zombie, a pioneer in exposés of the Left, produced a portfolio of photographs taken at the Up Your Alley demonstration in 2008 that included acts of sodomy and homosexual fellatio performed literally in the streets of San Francisco, and in the light of day.

No future historian will be impressed by the presence of male homosexuality in our society; this has existed to one extent or another since time immemorial. What will impress him, however, is the degree of public exhibition, something rarely seen on our planet.

UK Labour Party plans destruction of British culture. It will be clear from the overall historical record that the “elites” of Western Europe have been engaged for decades in the obliteration of the native culture and its replacement by a multicultural EU, using Islam as the sociopolitical flamethrower.

A key artifact of this campaign are the documents drafted by the British Labour Party in the early 2000s, outlining their intent to use mass non-European immigration as a tool to degrade and supplant the culture of Great Britain.

A piece of contemporary “classical” music. The more screechy and cacophonous, the better. Come to think of it, we ought to include a set of ear plugs in the capsule.

This could be paired with a recording of rap “music,” to demonstrate that our music has simultaneously been gutted at the levels of both high-brow and low-brow culture.

A piece of contemporary “art.” Any one will do. Like this masterpiece, for example:

Any ideas for the capsule? Please share.

This is the eighteenth installment in a continuing series. Here is what life will be like in the year 2020 if our civilization continues to go AWOL:

• Obama’s birth certificate found; newborn was registered at Havana hospital as Barry Carlos Hussein Soetoro ibn-Muhammed Guevara Obama III
• Timothy Geithner appointed Stock Market Czar; first official act is to cap annual increase of stock price at 10%, unless corporation is minority or female-owned
• Pulitzer Prize awarded to Chris Matthews for his “courageous refusal to be intimidated by reactionary journalists who scorn the social-justice function of their trade”
• EPA to investigate mayor of any city with temperature fluctuations greater than 40 degrees within 24-hour period
• Gordon Brown finally comes out of the closet; admits to being half pygmy and half woman
• Dalai Lama arrested in Paris on suspicion of denying the equality of all metaphysical states
• Education czar to choose between frontal lobotomy and castration as treatment for schoolboys caught pulling girls’ hair more than three times
• EU Parliament declares the traditional, realistic arts to be officially dead; painters, sculptors, and writers to be interned on the island of Malta
• Canadian Human Rights Commission indicts self following revelation that some members flirted with free speech
• Congress announces Mixed-Race History Month, GLBT History Month, Muslim History Month, Developmentally-Challenged History Month, and Panhandler History Month
• Latest ghetto-style haute couture: sneakers on the head, baggy pants on the torso, silky shirt on the legs, baseball cap on the feet
• Price of salt shaker on the black market passes $50 for a simple glass model
• Alligator arrested in Miami for hate crime following recent spate of attacks on Hispanic children
• Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan co-chairing commission to investigate and punish war crimes committed by American officers during WWII and other imperialistic wars

Would you care to add your own headlines?

[Note: To see earlier installments of “Headlines from the Year 2020," click the All Fiction link on the sidebar (located under Orwellian Snapshots).]