(I thought I'd try to initiate a little thought experiment, to provide a little motivation as the long campaign season wears on (as if we should need more motivating.) With special thanks to Trent Reznor for concept inspiration derived from the marketing of his 'Year Zero' album.)
Recently, a strange phenomena has overtaken the Internet. Web sites are being corrupted and overwritten with strange stories, journal entries, and articles that claim to be from the year 2012. Here at JAS News, we have attempted to piece together the strange missives into a single narrative, where apparently John McCain has become President. Although there are sure to be some true believers out there, the most reasonable explanation is that it is an obvious hoax, perhaps by someone seeking to influence the Presidential elections of 2008. Regardless, we have put the pieces of this alleged future together here for anyone interested in the phenomena.
What follows is the narrative of the future, at least according to conspiracy buffs who are collecting the messages that are appearing on corrupted websites:
In early 2009, President McCain made good on his promise to eliminate pork spending and earmarks. At least, those that did not directly benefit major corporations and their big-money lobbyists. The three million dollar program to study the DNA of bears was gone, that much is certain, along with almost all government research programs. The spending cuts were not selective in the slightest. Not a red cent available for an engineer at the University of Michigan, but an estimated three billion in tax cuts for oil companies to encourage drilling. Without the need for oversight of government-funded research grants, the National Science Foundation was dismantled, small portions of which were absorbed into various governmental organizations and departments, mainly the Department of Defense, NASA and the Department of Energy.
By January of 2012, the United States ranked dead last in what the rest of the world considers to be 'legitimate' patent applications. Almost all of the researchers and inventors had moved on to greener pastures. This also resulted in a loss of talent in the country’s universities... whereas once people from other nations around the world would come to study at our colleges and universities, it’s become almost unheard of today. Today, "foreign exchange student" means "could not get accepted to a college at home." To compensate for lost funding and fewer students, institutions in the US have increased the cost of education an average of 18% over the already projected rate of tuition increases.
In "support" of this portion of the narrative, several so-called future news articles and e-mails from "the future" have appeared. This one appeared on a government website, supposedly quoting evidence in a case of sedition against one Dr. Dan Thompkins:
To: dthompkins@physics.cwru.edu
From: //corrupted//
//partially corrupted, date appears to be at some point in 2012//
Dear Dr. Thompkins,
We have received your application for a work visa and regret that we must reject it at this time. Please note that the United Christian States of America has sought to block all emigration from the UCSA, particularly that of scientists, and that our government will not advise you to break any laws of your country.
//message corrupted//
...if you were to find yourself on our soil, please do not hesitate to apply for asylum.
//remainder of message corrupted//
We now return to the apparently disaster-laden 'future':
On May 13th of 2009, a catastrophic failure of the national air traffic control systems resulted in five plane crashes in one day, four of them from mid-air collisions. One of the planes crashed into an eight-story apartment building outside of Atlanta. There had been previous warnings that the nation’s air traffic control systems needed updated: in the summer of 2008, 650 flights were grounded when the system went down temporarily. It was said that restoring the infrastructure would be a massive project on the scale of the race to the moon in the 1960’s and action needed to be taken immediately.
The McCain Administration had allegedly been briefed by his transportation secretary when John McCain and Sarah Palin took office, but they put off addressing the issue to appease supporters that wanted to halt government spending, believing that it would not cause serious problems. 1,059 people died on May 13th, 2009. For the airline industry, this was the final blow to the ailing industry. For the McCain Administration, it provided some brief respite from criticism and allowed for a surge in his popularity – after it "became clear" that the air traffic control failure was due to "an act of terrorism" in which the system was hacked by those that "hate us for our freedom."
Other similar infrastructure related disasters would follow: among them the New York building collapse of August 2009, where the crumbling network of service passages underneath several high-rise buildings failed; the bridge collapse in Pittsburgh in January of 2010; the tunnel collapse in West Virginia in March of 2010.
‘Black Friday’ Families Memorial Gathering
Schenley Park, 12:00pm
May 13th, 2010
Come join in support of the families that lost friends and loved ones in the tragedy of May 13th, 2009, when terrorists hacked the national air traffic control systems and brought down five planes across our great nation. After a memorial ceremony, there will be a speech by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Rudy Giuliani. This event is sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security.
But that's not all! New information has been gathered by the so-called '2012 Truth Movement' about the fate of our country from various defaced websites:
Two more major banks had failed in the first year the McCain administration took office. The McCain administration responded, adding further deregulation to the banking and lending industries, among others, at the advice of his Secretary of Commerce Phil Gramm. ‘The New Deal’ that sprung out of the Great Depression, and ensured that there would be no more Great Depressions, was dead. An new era of Mega-Capitalism had fully emerged.
Rioting by the unemployed and chronically underemployed resulted in greater militarization of local and state police forces. ‘Non-lethal’ weaponry proliferated, and as of 2012 has taken the lives of an estimated 2,600 Americans. (Actual figures have not been released.) Few outbreaks of uprising made it onto the national news. Until California.
There were secession movements growing in many places around the country. Each secessionist movement was generally small. The average person was not aware of these movements, consumed with their own financial troubles, a never-ending series of disasters, and the lack of reporting on the issue. It was absent from the corporate websites most people had access to (net neutrality had failed to resonate as an issue by 2009, and most internet service providers began restricting access to all but a few sponsored mega-sites unless top dollar rates were paid) and was also underreported by the traditional news media. But in California, a group of legislators got a secession measure put on the ballot.
This got some mention by the national news media, but was not taken seriously in the rest of the country. They didn’t realize how much the people of California, the state with the nation’s highest Gross Domestic Product, didn’t want to be dragged down with the rest of the country. This was the state that voted for Obama, Kerry, and Gore. Each of those candidates lost, although Californians had voted overwhelmingly for each of them. Now, with many economists predicting continued economic turmoil, they wanted no more of it.
To try to rally the country in the first few years of his administration, McCain’s foreign policy bluster increased. With incursions into Middle East allies of Russia, and increased saber rattling, the Russians decided they had had enough. They invaded two former Soviet Union territories. Some analysts say it was done mainly to provoke the Unites States.
During a tense two-week standoff, it looked as though all-out global warfare might be possible. Insiders leaked accounts to a number of independent reporters that at one point, President McCain was planning to launch nuclear strikes. For several days after the incident, no one saw President McCain. Conspiracy theorists claim to have evidence the president had to be heavily sedated by his own staff, just to control his temper and avoid the destruction of the civilized world. We didn’t blow ourselves up, but the United States was now committed to three wars in the middle east and other rising conflicts around the globe. After the standoff, the government announced plans to reinstitute the draft to bolster our military forces.
In California, the secessionist movement grew so strong that on election day 2011, there was talk about closing the polls in that state as part of a ‘national emergency.’ California went ahead with plans to proceed with the election, not cooperating with Washington. Portions of the California National Guard did not comply with their orders to close down polling stations. Others were waylaid by rioters and protesters, sometimes resulting in open conflict that killed thousands. Remembrance of these massacres mark a day of independence in the west: By the end of the day, California declared its independence from the United States of America, and was now the Republic of California.
Then, in late November of 2011, President McCain died at the age of 75. The cause was identified as a brain hemorrhage, but the last two and a half years had aged the president dramatically – even more so than most presidents are seen to age while in office, due to the constant string of crises his administration faced.
President Sarah Palin was sworn in at her residence in Anchorage, Alaska, where she had been taking a five week-long vacation over the holiday season. By the summer of 2012, we had prayer in schools (and evolution as a topic was banned), abortion was illegal, seven more bridges and tunnels had collapsed, the Federal deficit had risen another 223% since McCain and Palin took office, we lost our most populous state and we were officially at war in three countries. The United States of America had been given a new name, by almost unanimous resolution: The United Christian States of America. It seemed increasingly clear that there would be no more elections in the United States, not in 2012, and perhaps not ever again. 2008 had been the last chance to get it right. There was no economic recovery. There was no diplomacy. There was no health care program. There was no change in energy policy. There was only the United Christian States. It has no elections. It has no Environmental Protection Agency. It does have a Department of Faith-based Education.
Warning or elaborate hoax? As more and more missives appear on the Internet, perhaps the answer will become clear.
Of course, according to the '2012 Truth Movement', there is still one sure way to get it to stop this November, whether these are messages from the future leaking back through time onto our humble old series of tubes or the work of a very imaginative group of hackers.
Fight like your life depends on it. It might. Good evening, and good luck.