My girlfriend and I have talked at length about this past decade being the worst ever. Katrina, 9/11, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, WMD, the Great Recession, foreclosures, reality television, Bush… there really isn’t anything good of note that happened. We didn’t even have a good counterculture like the Hippies or the Flappers.
Was this really the worst decade in memory? What do you think?
For a lot of people it certainly is the worst decade in memory, but not ever. WWII really sucked for a lot of people, and the black plague years sucked pretty hard too.
My memories are the 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s. Of those four, the 80s were the worst for me personally and I think the 00s was the worst for Americans as a group.
I think the seventies were worse than the 2000’s. Nixon, Watergate, and Vietnam were worse than Bush and Iraq. 9/11 was bad but there was actually more of a terrorist threat back in the seventies (although it was more domestic back then). There was the Soviet threat, which has no modern equivalent. As far as popular culture, movies were better, music was worse, TV was a tie. The seventies had no internet but there was a lot more casual sex.
I don’t know how it looked from any decade before the 60s, but one thing that might elevate (depress?) this past decade as the worst ever - at least for Americans - is a widespread perception that our country may be poised for a longterm decline on many fronts. From what I can recall of the 60s til now, it always seemed a given that the next generation would have things better than this generation on any number of fronts. Not seeing that so strongly right now…
I agree with Dinsdale. By most measures life was better in 2000-2009 than in any previous decade. What gets people down (including me) is the perception that we face insurmountable problems ahead and that our society lacks the strength to fix them. Our politicians are too corrupt to make positive changes, our corporations are too greedy to work for a better society, and many other institutions from the media to universities don’t appear to be functioning well. Back in the early 20th century we were a frisky young nation that was willing to take on challenges like the world wars and the Great Depression. Now it seems that something in our national character has changed.
I can’t believe anyone would begin to compare the last ten years with the years of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. One of my friends who is in her 90s says that her family switched from flour=based bread (biscuits) to cornmeal-based bread (cornbread) to try to save just a little more money.
The dust storms were so bad that the top soil blew all the way from the Western United States to the Eastern Shore and out onto the decks of ships in the harbors.
The dust storms were so bad that static electricity generated by wind-borne soil would cause sparks to leap off of metal farm equipment and barbed wire like a Van de Graaff generator. People who went outside sometimes became disoriented in the “black blizzards” and were found dead – smothered – or, in one case at least, permanently blinded by grit blowing into their eyes. And that’s *on top of *the likelihood that their farm had been foreclosed on, their bank failed, and the scarcity of food in a land without topsoil.
That’s exactly what I was thinking. We’ll never be “the good guy” again, even to the extent we ever were, after Bush started 2 wars, tortured people, rounded up innocents and held them in secret prisons, and we still re-elected him. Our image in the world is permanently effed and a lot of us here at home have permanently lost faith in our system. I still think we’re roughly as “good” as other western countries but that’s damning with faint praise, big time. I won’t raise my kids to think RAH RAH AMERICA IS GREAT! like I was raised and all the generations before me were raised. I’ve learned that patriotism is a disease.
Add Enron, the healthcare industry, what I’ve learned about the food industry, the media . . . I trust corporations even less than I trust our government now.
That’s what I got out of 2000 - 2009.
The Depression was awful for adults who were losing their farms and such, but everyone I talk to who was young at the time misses it. They remember those days fondly. My grandfather lived in a tent on a government camp and often scavenged for his meals in the woods, but he considered that the best time in his life. There was a sense of adventure and carefree freedom about it.
WWI and WWII were horrible for loss of life, and so was Viet Nam. Those decades were probably objectively worse, as were probably the 1860s.
But for me, in subjective assessment of my country, 2000 - 2009 was the worst.
(It was actually pretty awesome on a personal level, though nothing will ever beat the 90s, which I entered as a kid and exited as a carefree young adult.)
I think it’s just that it suffers in comparison to the 90’s and even the 80’s which were both unusually peaceful and prosperous. Compared to the two immediately preceding decades, yeah it sucked. In the big picture though, probably more of a return to the mean than anything.
I probably should’ve put a paragraph break there, because I agreed with what Dinsdale said, and then branched off in a different direction. I don’t want it to look like I’m putting words in his/her mouth.