Brave New World
Sorry for the lack of posting in the past week but I have been dying of a rare virus for most of the past week and have been mostly bedridden (Think Charlie’s Grandpa in the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) As a result I have done alot of thinking and have come up with the following.
I suppose we all remember our childhood as a more innocent, carefree time. A time of birds chirping, streams streaming, and homecooked dinners. This myth is passed down amongst the generations as our grandparents relay to our parents how much simpler things were when they were growing up and our parents tell us how they didn’t sweat the small stuff (drunk driving, AIDS) when they were our age. With all that being said I truly think that us 80’s babies will have as strong a case as anyone to present to our children when the time comes.
I started reading the newspaper at a young age and although the World has always had hot spots and trouble areas, the current times make the 90’s look like Narnia. In the 1990’s all us Western powers really had to worry about was the occasional threat from Saddam Hussein and keeping an eye on the Balkans. Sure the war over the former Yugoslavia claimed alot of lives and stayed on the front pages of the World’s major newspapers for months but in the end it has produced a (relatively) stable period in the tumultous history of that region. I don’t have a crystal ball but I wouldn’t be going out on that much of a limb to predict the Middle East will still be a mess a decade from now.
Beyond the geopolitical hot coals that Barack has to walk across each day he is also dealing with the worst economic crisis in over half a century. Although now that the Dow Jones has broke above 9,000 again you will hear the optimists proclaim for all to hear that the worst is behind us. This may be so but it is my belief that the long term recovery will be L shaped rather than V or U shaped. The fundamentals that modern economic theory rely upon have been shaken to their core and that is not something that we can just snap out of in six months. In fact there is a strong possibility that we will be the first generation to not improve on our parents standard of living on average. If that is not a sobering thought your probably not drunk enough.
From what my Nyquilled up brain can remember there have been several major bombings of Western cities in the past decade. New York, London, Madrid, and the (Very Western) resort town of Bali have all suffered casualties as have countless non-Western countries like Egypt, India, Jordan, and Yemen. The only major bombings that I can remember happening in the West in the 1990’s were Oklahoma City and Waterworld.
All jokes aside everytime I open a foreign affairs magazine or turn on CNN a part of me wants to rewind the clock back and party like its 1999. Hell maybe I could even warn Al Gore to spend a bit more time in Florida.
P.S. Sorry for the disjointed nature of this post…its probably the drugs.
2 years ago • 0 notes