That was the decade that was...

The first decade of the millennium is well and truly gone.  Thank God.

The past ten years saw the worst attack on American soil not inflicted by ourselves.  A date so horrible that it is not necessary to delineate the year when referring to it: "9/11".

It was a horrible, earth changing event.  It led to a vast array of changes; many, but not all, of which were desperate attempts to create an illusion of security in a bewildering sea of ill-perceived threats.

If you had told me ten years ago that we would have a country in which otherwise sane people would argue that it is sometimes acceptable to torture if you feel threatened enough, and where individuals that the government admits are not guilty of any crime are being detained against their will, I would have thought you crazy.  If you had told me that people would be arrested for disrupting the speeches of one president simply for wearing critical t-shirts, while protesters would march outside the public appearances of the next toting rifles, I would have thought you not only crazy but ceritifiable.

In 2001, "tea party" was a play date for your daughter and her stuffed animals.  Sarah Palin was mayor of an  unheard-of little town in Alaska.  Barack Obama was an Illinois state legislator and a professor of Constitutional law.  Guantanamo was simply a naval outpost in Cuba.*

People who are now called "socialist" and "communist" were called slightly left-of-center back then.  In the past ten years, it has been acceptable to call thoughtful, intelligent, patriotic Americans who simply disagree with the prevailing domestic or foreign policy "traitors."

And in other, less important ways, the world has shifted as well, although those have not been as seismic.

In January 2001, I had not yet gotten my first cell phone.  It was before the iPod, let alone the iPhone or iPad.  Most of the time I went to actual bookstores to purchase reading material. "Reality" tv was in its infancy: the words "voted off the island" had not yet become part of the American vernacular.  Matt Damon was a promising dramatic actor and screenwriter, not an action star.  Daniel Radcliffe was a child -- not yet a star -- who had just finished filming Sorcerer's Stone.  Peter Jackson was best known as the guy who made "Heavenly Creatures," for the not that many people who knew his work.  (LOTR zealots also knew him as "the guy we are going to have for lunch if his movie screws up our Bible".  Arguably, the films are much better than the book.)  3-D movies were gimmicks, not the wave of the future.

All of which is to say, the world has changed so much in ten years.  Life has become so much crazier then it used to be.

Here's hoping for a better decade ahead.

*The failure of the Administration to close Guantanamo, and its continued opposition to detainee releases, not merely infuriates me, it makes me ill.