Nothing Major Happened, But It Was A Big Decade

Here goes the last of the ought’s—for another century or so—and on to the second decade of the Twenty-first Century. For the past three centuries those second decades have been particularly bloody. Maybe this century will be different.
The most significant fact about the first decade of this century is the change in world perception of the United States. In 2000, nobody questioned the fact that the United States was the “world’s only super power”. Somehow, after 911, after being defied successfully by the nascent nuclear states of North Korea and Iran, we don’t look so invincibly dominant.
We’re pulling down the war in Iraq to something close to a draw—thanks to the active help of the people we called—and attacked as—enemies for most of the decade. After eight years in Afghanistan, no one is saying, “Mission Accomplished”.
Our vaunted economic system—envied and emulated without question only two years ago—has shown size seventeen-triple wide feet of clay. Instead of being seen as the engine that pulled the rest of the world up, we are cursed in many quarters as the weight that drags it down.
Sometimes the out-of-touch bankers in New York, with their squabbling over the right to multi-million dollar bonuses—presiding over a stock market that, right now, is 10% lower than it was ten years ago, remind me of Hitler’s henchman vying over the trappings of Third Reich power during the final week before Unconditional Surrender.
The Asiatic markets are where the IPOs are now. Turkey is booming. China is growing. The government is pouring more billions into GMAC in another desperate measure to keep it afloat. Oldsmobile, Pontiac and Saturn are gone. Chrysler, dropping closer and closer to flat line, hasn’t a single vehicle among listings of quality cars—except for one huge Dodge Truck.
Realtors warn that you can’t market a house that needs repairs. Today’s buyers simply do not have the available money to fix anything. The number of “For Sale” signs in my neighborhood is creeping up; nothing has moved since August.
That’s the big thing about this decade—it’s as if someone took a flag and washed it in very hot water. It still flies. It still has fifty starts and thirteen stripes. It just looks a bit smaller. We’re still the most powerful nation, the biggest economy, it’s just that we’ve lost a couple of steps on the guys right behind us—and, maybe, there are more of them.
More and more I sense in local school districts, county and state governments, in the national government, that the leaders there are facing something no living American has ever seen before. There is a real LACK of what Woody Guthrie called the “dough-re-mi, boys”. They don't know how to handle it.
Even in the Depression the Government(s) could borrow, print or somehow come up with the cash to build, develop, put millions to work on the PWA, WPA and CCC and create a huge new navy, from destroyers, battleships and carriers on up. Today shocked school boards, county road commissioners and on up are finding out the cupboard is actually bare!
I fear that, speaking as a Republican, Obama has probably done about as well as could be expected—in that he really had little to work with. After a year in office, things are sort of so-so normal—Democrats are still mostly for him, albeit with less enthusiasm than a year ago.
Republicans are ag’in him as much as they were last years. Independents are swinging away from him—but if they didn’t do that, would they really be independent?
Another year, another trillion or so—onward.