At the Close of a Decade
John-Clark Levin
Last Updated: 12/30/09 Section: Editorial
The Aughts, now in their last days, began life, like this millennium, in a strange and intoxicating mixture of hope and fear. Just as so many millions around the world prepared to usher in what was to be an age of peace and prosperity, others dug bunkers beneath the ground and stockpiled ammunition in anticipation of the collapse of civilization that was to be brought on by Y2K. How distant a memory, it seems - the looting, the rioting, the planes falling from the sky - how na've we feel ourselves to take taken such worries seriously. Yet just the same, the more optimistic visions seem vain and foggy, impossibly remote. We had been told that this millennium was a new age, that the close of the Cold War had brought an end to the world's old struggles forever. Yet in less than two years, the ebullient futurism of the Dot-com bubble had burst, and our dreams of peace had been shattered in a single, clear September morning.
The decade since has been the fraught struggle to regain our old sense of security, and to reclaim the bright promises that were so quickly voided. Our culture quickly turned to escapism in the worlds of fantasy, pouring billions of dollars into franchises like Star Wars, Spider-Man, Harry Potter, and The Lord of the Rings. At the same time, we found newfound relief in the trivialities of the entertainment world, tuning into Survivor in numbers more suggestive of an Apollo mission, and lapping up Ozzie Osbourne's bleeped-out stammerings with unbelievable enthusiasm.
But none of this could drown out the rumblings of war and instability in the world. We needed a way to process our uncertainties - how many of us really knew what was going on with Ahmed Chalabi, Scott Ritter and the Yellowcake? - and a global scene which looked nothing like the belle epoch imagined in the last days of 1999. Where our reality was painted in shades of gray, we cast it into the black and white of Jack Bauer's 24, and finding flaws in our president, we turned to a romanticized one in The West Wing. Try as we might, though, we could not hide from history. Saddam Hussein defied our last ultimatum, and despite whatever misgivings, most Americans knew that the time had come to rally as one to the war flag.
The decade since has been the fraught struggle to regain our old sense of security, and to reclaim the bright promises that were so quickly voided. Our culture quickly turned to escapism in the worlds of fantasy, pouring billions of dollars into franchises like Star Wars, Spider-Man, Harry Potter, and The Lord of the Rings. At the same time, we found newfound relief in the trivialities of the entertainment world, tuning into Survivor in numbers more suggestive of an Apollo mission, and lapping up Ozzie Osbourne's bleeped-out stammerings with unbelievable enthusiasm.
But none of this could drown out the rumblings of war and instability in the world. We needed a way to process our uncertainties - how many of us really knew what was going on with Ahmed Chalabi, Scott Ritter and the Yellowcake? - and a global scene which looked nothing like the belle epoch imagined in the last days of 1999. Where our reality was painted in shades of gray, we cast it into the black and white of Jack Bauer's 24, and finding flaws in our president, we turned to a romanticized one in The West Wing. Try as we might, though, we could not hide from history. Saddam Hussein defied our last ultimatum, and despite whatever misgivings, most Americans knew that the time had come to rally as one to the war flag.
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