It’s 2040 and little Joe Schmoe is asked to bring in a grandparent’s written memory of the good (or terrible) old days. In a few paragraphs, how would you sum up the late 20th and early 21st centuries?
Was it a period of great technological progress? Economic inequity? Cultural strife? Peace in the first world? Ecological destruction? Hope and dismay intertwined?
Does history remember Pathfinder? Bin Laden? Tim Berners-Lee? Monsanto? The Prius? The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner? Google? Citizens United? Air pollution? Stem cells? The Arab Spring? Occupy? iPod? Africa?
Is little Joe falling asleep now? Do these things seem as irrelevant to him as the telegraph, the steam engine, and the printed book?
In 1974 I was telling my two older kids, ages 7 and 8, that Richard Nixon would forever be remembered as the worst scoundrel who had ever been president. Little did I know that 38 years later and saying, you know he did a lot of good things and was great compared to most of his successors. He recognized China, did eventually end the war, didn’t blow out the budget the way Reagan and W and actually was pretty good on civil rights. I can’t begin to imagine how history will feel about the current era. I know how I feel about it now, but that’s exactly my point.
Once upon a time there was a great country founded on individual freedom and liberty, where all individuals had a chance for liberty and prosperity and everyone had a pony. Then the Muslim Antichrist arose in Africa and spread the specter of socialism over the world, destroying the United States of America and leaving in it’s place a tyranny founded on evil and destruction, our current United Nations of Islam. If only those people had listened to reason and banned the teaching of evolution and climate change in our schools, we would have escaped this hell, but he who should not be named destroyed us all.
YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP! OH, DAMN YOU! GODDAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!