Christmas has come and gone and soon New Years will come and go as well...taking with it the 2000's and all the misery they contained. I recently came across an article in Time Magazine entitled The '00s: Goodbye (at Last) to the Decade from Hell, which I shared with my Twitter followers. What follows here were my stream-of-conscience thoughts on the article that I posted after reading it. I would definitely recommend reading the article before continuing.
Aside from the fact that I assumed people reading my twitter updates had read it when I posted them, I found it to be pretty eye-opening. It also confirmed much of what I had been saying about the 2000's for a long time. Specifically that such a constant, nightmare string of calamities could not have been created just within the span of 10 years. Nor were these calamities restricted to war and terrorism. This decade was the manifestation of a bill finally coming due for a previous 50 years of over-borrowing/spending.
Please excuse any typos or spelling mistakes as this was all written out in real-time and has not been edited except to add relevant links to past posts.
Here's to next year, next decade and hopefully some real changes, not just hollow political nonsense...
Goodbye to the "Decade from Hell" http://tinyurl.com/yjqhqr8 #leaveitinthe00s 10:56 AM
One thing that article got absolutely right: the disasters of the 2000s were created by our own neglect in previous decades #leaveitinthe00s 10:57 AM
President #Bush has taken so much of the blame for what happened during his administration but if you pay attention... #leaveitinthe00s 10:58 AM
...you'll see how much of bad things that happened this decade were ticking time bombs long before he got in office #leaveitinthe00s 10:58 AM
I've said for years that we should have seen 9/11 coming...with all the terror acts of the 1990's, the intifadas etc #leaveitinthe00s 10:59 AM
We as a nation lulled ourselves to sleep and thought the end of the Cold War was the "end of history" - well we were wrong #leaveitinthe00s 11:00 AM
Every calamity of this decade had its roots in our laziness, our failure to act and the naivete that came out of the 90's #leaveitinthe00s 11:02 AM
Our desperate, pathetic attempts to convince ourselves that we "won" and would live happily ever after is what created this monster decade 11:02 AM
But there is no "happily ever after" life. It's a fairy tale. Even after you win something you have to continue to progress #leaveitinthe00s 11:03 AM
Otherwise someone else is going to just swoop in and eat your lunch. And before you know it your victory has turned into a crushing defeat. 11:04 AM
This is exactly what happened this decade. We were raised to think that the world would inevitably be come peacer, safer #leaveitinthe00s
But it's an illusion. There is always something evil out there waiting for you let your guard down. #leaveitinthe00s 11:05 AM
American society must heed this, must learn from this and must address it or this may be remember as the CENTURY from Hell 11:06 AM
We cannot just sit back and assume things will go well for us because we're "right" or think we're doing "the right thing" #leaveitinthe00s 11:07 AM
There are bad people out there and there are bad people in here. We were chewed up by external AND internal forces #leaveitinthe00s 11:07 AM
The only way is to act in advance. To look down the road and not ASSUME the 18-wheeler is going to swerve out of our way #leaveitinthe00s 11:08 AM
To heed warnings not just write them off as alarmist. To be open-minded to the fact that we might be wrong. #leaveitinthe00s 11:10 AM
To look at OURSELVES and realize that WE ALL MAKE A DIFFERENCE. Our actions, no matter how small affect society. #leaveitinthe00s 11:13 AM
To realize we bury ourselves in Hollywood deaths and fad diets while a bunch of angry starving savages plot against us #leaveitinthe00s 11:14 AM
That we spend money on studying mating rituals of river trout in Louisiana while the New Orleans levees fall into disrepair #leaveitinthe00s 11:15 AM
And bridges collapse over the very Mississippi river we are studying #leaveitinthe00s 11:16 AM
We push banks to relax lending practices to inner cities while a bunch of crooks convince everyone to use their houses as credit cards 11:18 AM
We invest and invest and invest and invest and assume the stock market will always go higher and our home prices will to #leaveitinthe00s 11:19 AM
We pour thousands, millions, billions, TRILLIONS into industries that never turn a profit or when they do it's a house of cards 11:20 AM
We push the big evil corporations to make absurd deals with labor unions that foster laziness in designs and impossible-to-maintain costs 11:21 AM
Then we STOP BUYING THE CARS we made and instead buy cars produced by countries that do NOT force this fake morality on their corporations 11:23 AM
And we wonder why we are going out of business. We sit around and point fingers when news breaks of another bankruptcy. #leaveitinthe00s 11:23 AM
But we never look at ourselves. At our habits as Americans. At our pathetic, declining work ethic. #leaveitinthe00s 11:24 AM
At our stupid, naive world-view. We're a country that has the nerve to have over 50% of our citizens classified as "obese" #leaveitinthe00s 11:25 AM
While crying about world hunger. #leaveitinthe00s 11:25 AM
We want to cut down on illegal immigration but complain when a bottle of Tropicana goes up by 50 cents #leaveitinthe00s 11:26 AM
We want to embrace everyone as equals and treat them as friends, even as they hold knives to our throats...and our backs. #leaveitinthe00s 11:27 AM
We want faster, bigger, less efficient SUVs that clog up the highways but we shudder when the price of oil goes up #leaveitinthe00s 11:28 AM
We say we want peace and security and safety but ignore constant death threats and chaos for DECADES #leaveitinthe00s 11:30 AM
Then when we finally DO something about it we denigrate the effort and do everything we can to revert to our old ways! #leaveitinthe00s 11:31 AM
Do you want to know who to blame for the Decade from Hell? Look in the mirror. #leaveitinthe00s 11:31 AM
Do you know why #China, #Iran and #Russia (wait didn't we beat those guys in the 90's? ) are rising look in the mirror #leaveitinthe00s 11:32 AM
They rise and we fall because they WANT IT MORE BADLY then you do - they know the feeling of hunger you know the taste of Baby Ruths 11:33 AM
They know that actions have CONSEQUENCES. They know if they don't plant seeds in the Spring they'll have no food in the Winter. 11:35 AM
We Americans expect that something will always save us. The govt will bail us out. Stocks will rebound. Terrorists will learn to love us. 11:35 AM
Guess what! There are no guarantees in life. Something will not always save you. And often things that appear to only delay the inevitable. 11:37 AM
The only way to ensure that we never experience another decade like is by looking INTERNALLY at ourselves #leaveitinthe00s 11:37 AM
It's not GM's fault they went bankrupt - it's OUR SOCIETY'S fault for propping them up and supporting their stupid business model for years 11:38 AM
It's not the govt's fault that the economy collapsed it's OUR FAULT for electing ppl who were as naive as we were to make decisions for us! 11:39 AM
It's not the bankers' fault that we're defaulting on our loans - it's OUR fault for buying houses we could never afford! #leaveitinthe00s 11:39 AM
It's not #Bush's fault that a massive hurricane slammed into New Orleans, it's OUR FAULT for neglecting the city's defenses for YEARS! 11:41 AM
It's not the CIA and FBI'S fault they didn't see 9/11 coming it's OUR FAULT for foolishly thinking the world was safe... 11:41 AM
...and electing people who cut our defense and INTEL budgets and foolishly shared in our naivete! #leaveitinthe00s 11:42 AM
We must realize that world events do not happen in a vacuum, that our actions have CONSEQUENCES 11:43 AM
If our govt screws up it's because we ELECTED THEM to represent us and make our decisions for us - democracy means we're never off the hook 11:44 AM
You want freedom? You want input on national issues and decision-making? This is the price. You must take responsibility for yourselves. 11:44 AM
We MUST look inwardly to be critical of our own social norms and assumptions and make REAL CHANGES to our habits #leaveitinthe00s 11:46 AM
Only then will we have ANY HOPE of not repeating this, this awful, terrible, Decade from Hell that we created for ourselves #leaveitinthe00s 11:47 AM
Go ahead and ponder that, as you're drinking yourselves into oblivion next week and making resolutions that you'll abandon by February. I know I will...
Here's hoping the 10's will be remembered as the "Decade of self-responsibility" where we undo these mistakes and finally start acting like grown-ups.
Have a happy New Year everyone and be safe.
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