Circa 2217, archaeologists unearth "Prosperity Banners" from dying America

[Poll_Blind]

Above, Some examples of 'Prosperity Banners' used by the Bush Administration late in The American Decline

Reuters/United European News
Old Cincinnati
June 17th, 2217

Professor of Archeology at Oxford, Dr. Kwon Lee, unveiled today an extremely rare find: A complete 5-set banner collection from the American President Bush's visit to Old Cincinnati in the region where the American state "Ohio" (O-HI-O) was during the American Period of North America. At a time in the history of America when the failing nation was already bankrupt the president, George W. Bush, mounted an enormous propaganda campaign to convince the citizenry that all was well. The last 'Prosperity Banners' to have been unearthed were in 2186 and not in nearly as good condition as Dr. Lee's recent find.

--snip--

The professor addressed concerns of the authenticity of the pieces by showing a short video depicting the exhumation process from a "landfill" used in the area from about 1996 to 2008. "Landfills", nothing more than an open pit into which enormous piles of trash and other discarded material were placed and then covered over, have been a recent boon to archaeologists as they try to understand the years leading up to The American Decline.

--snip--

Dr. Lee explained that these pieces are much more important than the nearly-indestructible plastic (a petroleum product which hardened into a solid and which was used extensively in the 20th and the first half of the 21st centuries) they were constructed with. He has written three books on The American Decline and is trying to garner more interest in the youth of London, and elsewhere, with his exhibit "And The Band Played On: A Declining America On The Brink", an exhibit detailing the disbelief of the American people when their country began its descent into tyranny and eventual dissolution.

"Young Britons need to understand the lessons learned from The American Decline and why it is important to us today. The disconnect from reality has been romanticized in recent films like 'Carry on, Soldier!' (2212) and 'Enough For All' (2208) but people need to see the human side to understand that it could happen anywhere, even now."

--snip--

Dr. Lee expressed gladness at the recovery of the 'Prosperity Banners' but noted some frustration with Chinese authorities in recovering more artifacts.

"They do not, generally, like dwelling on the sordid past of the Mwi Gwo ("Beautiful Land" in Chinese), especially what they have termed as 'political archeology', which they see as an attempt to weaken the communist party."

"In reality, I'm trying to show people where America went wrong and how we can avoid their mistakes. They were not uneducated. They were not dumb. They were one of the brightest and most promising nations on Earth at the time and their failures are our lessons to learn."

--snip--

Dr. Lee will be giving a presentation every day all week at the British Museum with presentations on Tuesday and Wednesday for youth under 15 years of age.

--snip--

PB

[paparush]

1. Incredible Post!! K & R!!

[DemoTex]

2. Excellent!

K&R

[TechBear_Seattle]

3. Interesting factoids about landfills

Landfills that were closed 50 years ago have been excavated. The conditions were found to be so dry and anaerobic -- that is to say, so hostile to microbes that cause decomposition -- that newspapers from the 1930s were found perfectly readable, and food scraps were found to have mummified rather than rotted.

Modern landfills are engineered to dry out garbage and keep it from decomposing in any manner. The reason is two-fold: to prevent toxins from seeping in to the water supply, and to minimize the build-up of methane and other potentially hazardous gases.* The resulting landfills are much better at preserving materials than even many museum "safe rooms." It is estimated that, if the drainage and sheltering safeguards put in to a landfill started in 2000 remain unbreached, newspapers buried that year will still be perfectly legible in the year 5000.

[Poll_Blind]

4. I didn't realize they could preseve material so well. In my peice's...

...future I also imagined Chinese slave labor (read: Our Descendents) digging landfills up to harvest metals and materials so carelessly thrown away by us, this afternoon. Somehow it reminded me of an article Arthur C. Clarke wrote once (tongue firmly planted in cheek, I hope) about blowing up atom bombs in the sea to harvest the minute amounts of gold that seawater contains.

The future's getting darker every day. We hold the torch. Dare we light it and Behold?

PB

[TechBear_Seattle]

5. Forgot to add the footnote

The "potentially hazardous gases" comment derives from a project in the early 1970s in the San Francisco Bay area (I think it was near San Jose or Palo Alto, somewhere around there.) A large landfill was closed and covered over, and a park with an outdoor concert venue was built over it.

Some time latter, though, methane from decomposing garbage began to seep out. It caused "bubbles" to appear under the turf. Park-goers found that they could poke a straw in to these bubbles and light the venting gass, causing will-o-the-wisp lights that would last sometimes for hours (the bubbles were at the top of a gas column that might stretch down many feet, or be connected to a spread out pocket of methane deep under ground.) The park was closed when one of these will-o-the-wisps exploded, burning several people and scorching an area some 4 feet in diameter. I believe the landfill was dug up and essentially retrofitted with a system of pipes to vent the gas safely, at a huge cost.

[Poll_Blind]

6. Not to mention that all that material would liquify in a big earthquake...

PB

[Canuckistanian]

12. Amazing preservation

I saw some article showing the excavation of a landfill that was closed during the 70's. The newspapers looked only a few days old and there was a picture of a nearly intact hot dog that was only slightly wrinkled.

[Poll_Blind]

7. A kick for those coming home from work on the East Coast. n/t

PB

[newswolf56]

8. Profound political prophecy, accurate for at least five reasons:

(1)-Obviously you are among the rare few who have not been fooled by China's apparent embrace of capitalism -- "apparent" because it is taking place within the context of the ideological hybrid of Marxism and the principles of Sun Tzu: the uniquely Chinese methodology for avoiding the economic errors by which Soviet Marxism was undermined by capitalist subversion and ultimately collapsed.

(2)-In the context of Sun Tzu, Chinese ownership of the U.S. debt -- already an economic fact, and fostered entirely by the idiotic but nearly bottomless contempt the American ruling class has for Asiatics -- is the first step toward an overwhelming victory: not for imperialism in the classic sense, but for global Marxism: Trotsky's doctrine of permanent revolution revitalized and expressed in accordance with the ageless principles of Sun Tzu and his successors, including Lin Pao and Giap. The result is an onslaught of a breadth and duration literally inconceivable to the shallow Occidental mind, especially imprisoned as it is by the limitations of Abrahamic theology.

(3)-China's new and growing alliance with Russia is another example of the same sort of strategic thinking, bolstered by the fact -- unknown in the U.S. save to readers of the European press -- that Russia itself is rapidly approaching another Communist revolution: most likely a peaceful restoration coupled with a strong determination that "this time we do it right." Bearing in mind that Putin's former post in the KGB marks him as ideologically pure, most (if not all) of his policies are probably an effort to facilitate this impending revolution and simultaneously remain ahead of it -- that is, by exercising intelligent leadership, prevent his nation from falling backward into the pit of ruinous violence c. 1917-1923.

(4)-Older U.S. Marxists -- that is, Marxists of the generation who endured the Great Depression -- never backed away from their predictions that capitalism would eventually throw off its New Deal restraints and again unleash its Inner Tyrannosaur: thus these elder Marxists went to their graves predicting the time would come -- "not in my lifetime or yours, but surely in your children's or grandchildren's lifetimes" -- when capitalism would again become so relentlessly savage "the Red Army will be welcomed throughout America as an army of liberation." Your 2217 scenario embodies precisely this prophecy: how else would America now be Mwi Gwi? (An interesting pun, by the way, on the Hangul MiGuk: "barbarian from across the sea," the Korean name for Occidentals.)

(5)-While I have no real information on the scope of Chinese/Russian experiments with alternative energy, the Marxist inputs in each nation already offer the sociological framework for coping with the twin apocalypses of post-Peak-Oil and global warming, and the underlying spiritual ethos of non-Islamic Asia -- that is, the unitary principles of Siddhartha and Lao Tzu -- provide a supportive dimension of implicit cooperation with nature that is totally lacking in the Abrahamic (Jewish/Christian/Muslim) worldview. Thus -- particularly given the absence of the prohibitive greed-barriers of capitalism (capitalist greed being the real reason U.S. public transport, health care, education etc. are by far the worst in the industrial world) -- the sort of society described in the following link would arise even more naturally under Chinese influence than it did in this example:

http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/articles/657

Good work, Poll_Blind: in fact the most rightfully thought-provoking essay I've ever read on DU. The outline of a novel, perhaps?

_________
Edit: revision of unclear sentence.

[Poll_Blind]

11. It is part of a much larger work. Very glad you liked it!

The positive responses keep the wheels turning.

PB

[LouisianaLiberal]

9. The bitter irony of the "prosperity banners"

being found by the inheritors of our folly was brilliantly done. Loved it.

[The Doctor.]

10. Dude, check it out!

On page one of the sports section;

"Cubs win World Series!"