This is my last column of the year and also the last one of the decade, one that I can’t say I’m sorry to see come to an end. 2009 has been a difficult year in a decade that has been both difficult and disillusioning.
A book called “Decade of Disillusionment” written by Jim Heath describes the 1960s as the years when America “became a country desperately struggling to escape its Armageddon.” There was the quagmire of the Vietnam War, the failure of the Great Society, and the assassinations of President John Kennedy, civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, and Senator Robert Kennedy, all of which left Americans shell-shocked and dispirited.
I would argue that the first decade of the new millennium is also a decade of disillusionment with distinct parallels to the ‘60s. Now, in place of Vietnam, we have the war in Iraq and the alarming escalation in Afghanistan. We are also struggling with hunger, want, debt, and disappointment — much of it a direct result of the callousness and neglect of the Bush years.
In the last decade we have also witnessed the unprecedented breakdown of so many codes of moral conduct, both in this country and around the world. We have seen how greed, dishonesty, and political and religious extremism have taken a huge toll on human life and happiness and cast a giant, grim shadow on a way of life that we once took for granted.
The first decade of the new millennium technically started on January 1, 2000, with one of the biggest non-events in history — Y2K, the much-feared meltdown of all computers and the chaos that it was supposed to cause. It also started with another phrase new to most of us — the hanging chad, the piece of paper left when the paper is punched. Who knew that something so tiny and innocuous would be at the center of the storm in the highly divisive 2000 presidential election? Who knew that the great government of the United States of America would be put on hold by voting irregularities in a state like Florida? Who felt ripped off that it was George Bush in a squeaker and wonders how differently the course of history would have turned had Al Gore been declared the victor?
While Y2K was the boogeyman that wasn’t and George Bush the son was the boogeyman that was, the real boogeyman also turned out to be kids with names like Eric and Dylan, the kids who sat next to you in chemistry class who turned out to be killers. Though the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado took place on April 20, 1999, I would maintain that it was the seminal event that jump-started the collective angst and agita of the decade.
The sheer shock of the rampage, the surrealistic images of students running screaming and bloodied out of a school building, the audio of the calls for help — technology pushing it out live to a disbelieving world even as the events unfolded — shattered any innocence we might have once harbored that school was one of the safest places for children to be and their peers were the people you could trust.
Another campus shooting, the Virginia Tech massacre eight years later almost to the day, and the deaths of 33 people, including the gunman, dissuaded us of that notion in the same way and also highlighted the inadequacies of the mental health system.
In the last decade we learned that death and horror could suddenly rain down from the sky on a sunny, picture-perfect September morning, and that civilians — men and women, our neighbors, friends, brothers, fathers, sons, daughters, mothers, wives — could go off to work one day and never come home. September 11, 2001, forever changed the way we viewed the world and ourselves. We understood that there were lots of people who hate us and our country simply because we are Americans, and that we would have to live with a vigilance that would permeate every aspect of our lives. To this day, I can’t drive past the city without looking at the giant emptiness where the twin towers once stood, nor can I ever be in New York, ride on the subway or fly on a plane without thinking about security and whether we are truly safe.
During the ‘60s, the phrase “you can’t trust anyone over 30” emerged to describe the generation gap. In the 2000s, a better phrase would be “you can’t trust anyone.” Not the government that led us into an unwinnable war on the premise of a lie (where were those alleged weapons of mass destruction?) Not the banks that led us to the precipice of a second Great Depression with greed and irresponsible lending practices. Not investors like Bernard Madoff who had the face of a friend but the heart of a monster and ruined lives with a stunning sense of democracy — the rich and the famous, charities, schools and other non-profits, no one was immune. Not leaders like Eliot Spitzer who pretended to be a crusader against corruption while betraying his wife and family. And not even American icons like Tiger Woods who gets the honor of closing out this decade by proving that image can largely be smoke and mirrors, and even American heroes can tumble swiftly from grace with shocking behavior.
Globally, we saw the effects of greed and dishonesty in the horrific death toll from the earthquake in China’s Sichuan province in May, 2008. Some 88,000 people died, 10,000 of them schoolchildren in classrooms that collapsed around them because of shoddy construction. Another six babies died and 300,000 were sickened by infant formula watered down with an industrial chemical — all in the name of profits. Toys were tainted by lead-based paint; the smallest and most vulnerable again put at risk in the drive for the bottom line.
In a decade that saw some of deadliest natural disasters in history, including the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 that killed hundreds of thousands of people, we also saw how neglect and indifference can compound human suffering. Witness the disaster of Hurricane Katrina and the deaths of almost 2,000 people, not just from the fury of the storm itself, but from the devastating failure of a levee system that should have been fixed. Human failure — a design flaw — also contributed to the collapse of the I-35W Mississippi River Bridge in Minnesota that killed 13 people. How many levees, bridges, and roads across the United States are in imminent danger of failure at this very moment?
In these waning days of 2009, there are some glimmers of hope. The economy is looking better, but until more people are working again, we can’t say we’re out of the sickroom quite yet. There might be a national healthcare system, finally, but on the flip side, the national debt has soared to new highs that could jeopardize our children’s future. The new technologies offer a world that is more connected, but ironically, people are communicating less than ever in meaningful ways.
There is a man of decency and principle, finally, in the White House, who has promised to bring home our troops, but the omnipresent threat of terror on our shores means true peace may never be ours. All of this is why now, more than ever, no matter what your religious beliefs, we all need to remember and celebrate the true spirit of this season: Joy to the world, peace on Earth, goodwill to men.
My wish for you and yours, as always, is health and happiness and the time to savor them.
Happy New Year and Happy New Decade!
