2001 was a bad year all around. The dot-com collapse, the beginning of the eight-year regression under Bush, and the chaos of September 11 all combined to create a general malaise that poisoned the entire decade. The most poignant tweet of the night Bin Laden was shot was something along the lines of “Can we start the 21st century now?”
It really doesn’t much feel like we won, looking back. We’re still getting the anal probe at the airport, as security measures are just barnacled on rather than evaluated and re-thought. Nobody seems to be moving on getting us out of our current armed engagements abroad – nor do I expect them to, given that anyone who talks about pulling out troops gets tarred as a Defeatocrat. And the “scared of everything” model of politics has extended from merely the threat of international terrorist blowing up the local Wal-Mart to a full-blown panic over everything from gay people to the secret Muslim in the White House to the government-indoctrination camps known as public schools*…seriously, it’s reached full-on whuckery** out there.
I mean, don’t get me wrong. The iPhone 4 still feels like a slice of the future, and it’s neat that I was able to stand up with my surrogate sister at her lesbian wedding and nobody blinked an eye (even if the state of California got whucked itself for the moment), and it’s cool having On Demand HD…but at the same time, it feels like the future is more unevenly distributed than ever, especially when I pass through the ancestral lands.
Plus, no long coats. Every single TV show I ever saw signifies “near future” with a plethora of long coats. Still waiting on mine.
* I am not shitting you. Rick Santorum said this. This is a former Senator who wants to be President.
** “whuck” – contraction coined by Tim Goodman for when you need something better than WTF but can’t spell it out.