Interesting Times

Is it me, or is this decade a lot more dramatic, and substantially so, than the last one? We got 9/11, the War, the Death of a Pope, the prospect of popular, pro-democracy, peaceful revolutions in corners of the world that are strangers to them, etc. What was going on at the mid-point of the 1990's? The Republican takeover of Congress? The Fall of HillaryCare? Yugoslavia's meltdown? All minor, parochial happenings, unless you happened to be caught up with them. Nothing worldwide, except for Aids.

I know all history is really a simultaneous sowing and reaping of the hearts of humanity, but it seems to me that this is a time of tectonic shifting, of places and possibilities moving in new ways.

The other possibility is that all this is but the aftershock of the collapse of the Soviet Empire, which fell so softly as to lead us to believe that we had escaped all consequences. Come to think of it, the U.S.S.R. did technically end in 1991, so I guess you can put that one in the 90's column. So maybe it was the late 90's, the "Roaring" part if you will, the era of Monica Lewinsky, that will be remembered as silly and without consequence. Hell, maybe after the 2006 elections and the (very) gradual petering out of the Iraq insurgency, the pace of history will entropy and we can settle back down to American Idol and swinging the Stock Market again, and the late 00's will be another little nap until China decides to go after Taiwan or Asian Bird Flu starts dropping people like flies, or (insert unforseen event here).

I don't know. You don't know. All we know is all we are...