Some thoughts on the end of the decade. I am not, usually, one who thinks in terms of a time period being bad or good. I usually look at things specifically. This project went well or that one did not, but this decade has been special for it's lack of good news.
For me the decade started with all the worry about the dreaded Y2K event. Remember, the computers that run our lives would not be able to handle the change of date as we went from the 1900's to the 2000's. Everything would shut down. No phones, no computers, no water, no flushing toilets etc.. Chaos! It actually turned out ok because the worst predictions did not come true and all the work that went into our systems to upgrade and head off the trouble went a long way in making a better more secure system. That was actually good news but the anxiety we suffered in the run- up was to become the norm for the 'Oughts".
That is what some people are calling the period from 2000 to the beginning of 2010. The "Oughts". The name fits. By the way it's Twenty ten, not two thousand and ten, but I digress. The reasoning for calling this past decade the "Oughts", to me sounds about right. The stock market actually was higher on the last day of 1999 that it is today. That is actually less than ought. The last time that happened, interestingly enough, was the nineteen-thirties.
If you look at the state of the family in America, it is hard not to call the decade even worse names. Except for the very top of society, income and upward mobility was at best, stagnant. Prices kept going up. Families struggled with soaring health care costs and energy costs. Remember four dollar a gallon gas? We still haven't figured out how that happened and then went back to a "reasonable" three dollars and change.
On the higher education front, tuition increases, even at state schools, have made it tough, if not impossible, for kids to get the training they will need to compete with the young people who are emerging all over the world in economies that seem to be doing better than ours. Governmentally we've pretty much seen a decade of misstep after misstep and the disputed 2000 election, which led to George Bush being elected president, started
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a decade of partisanship that the president and his party only exacerbated. There was one good element in that debacle. The losing side accepted the election result for the good of the country. After all, we only have one president and isn't in all of our interest to see him succeed. Would, that the losing side this last election give that treatment a try and wish our only president success. Unfortunately the good of the country is not always the primary mover for a segment of the citizenry and their representatives.
The big event that we all went through was, of course, the attack on 911. I put this event in my governmental misstep category. I am in the minority, but feel that had the government, {read G.W. Bush} been paying attention, it would never have happened. Unfortunately it did and it is a watershed moment for all of us, the country and the world. Out of this comes, first, the Afghanistan War and then the bait and switch Iraq War. Another fond remembrance that jumps to mind is the particularly galling, "mission accomplished". All that blood and treasure and not only American blood and treasure. We are all waiting for the final accounting on all that and maybe this decade we will get one.
Natural disasters also played a big part in the "Oughts". No one will forget Katrina, certainly no one who lived through it in New Orleans. With help from an incompetent administration, remember, "you're doing a heck of a job, Brownie", a whole American city was devastated and is still not put back together. Again, maybe this decade we will get it done.
On a personal note, I can't help myself, during this decade, I had, what I thought was the ultimate job of my career. A talk show of my own, in New York City. Unfortunately, in keeping with the theme of the "oughts", it ended up being a big disaster for me, both personally and professionally. I could go on and catalogue the rest of the "Oughts" but it's getting me down.
Suffice to say that we have nowhere to go from here but up. Oh, there were some good things that happened. My grandson was born. He's great but it makes me worry more about the future, his future. My mother, who didn't live to see this past decade, used to say something to me when I would tell her I was trying something new and was worried about it. She would say, "my money's on you, Anthony". Well, I want to put my money on us. On America, its people and its government. Hopefully, this is our decade.
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