the next TIME Magazine
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At exactly two minutes after midnight on Jan. 1, 2000, an alarm sounded at a nuclear power plant in Onagawa, Japan. Government officials and computer scientists around the globe held their breath. Was this the beginning of a massive Y2K computer meltdown? Actually, no. It was an isolated event, one of a handful of glitches to occur (including the failure of 500 slot machines at two racetracks in Delaware) as the sun rose on the new decade. The dreaded millennial meltdown never happened.
Instead, it was the American Dream that was about to dim. Bookended by 9/11 at the start and a financial wipeout at the end, the first 10 years of this century will very likely go down as the most dispiriting and disillusioning decade Americans have lived through in the post–World War II era. We're still weeks away from the end of '09, but it's not too early to pass judgment. Call it the Decade from Hell, or the Reckoning, or the Decade of Broken Dreams, or the Lost Decade. Call it whatever you want — just give thanks that it is nearly over
Instead, it was the American Dream that was about to dim. Bookended by 9/11 at the start and a financial wipeout at the end, the first 10 years of this century will very likely go down as the most dispiriting and disillusioning decade Americans have lived through in the post–World War II era. We're still weeks away from the end of '09, but it's not too early to pass judgment. Call it the Decade from Hell, or the Reckoning, or the Decade of Broken Dreams, or the Lost Decade. Call it whatever you want — just give thanks that it is nearly over
American Indecision: The Contested Presidential Election of 2000
If the 20th Century was what Henry Luce declared the American Century, the 21st century didn't start off looking the same way. Indeed, it is very likely that the first 10 years of this century will go down as the most dispiriting and disillusioning decade Americans have lived through in the post World War II era. The kick-off was the month-long controversial vote-count in Florida that ultimately ended in the U.S. Presidency going to George W. Bush by an official margin of a mere 537 votes. The vicious partisanship, from the grass-roots all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, was a harbinger of the public rhetoric of the rest of the decade.
America Attacked: September 11, 2001
The defining moment of the decade was the terror attacks on New York City and Washington D.C. of 9/11/01. They redefined global politics for at least a generation and caused Americans to collectively question the continental security they had until then rarely worried about. It also gave the U.S. the name of a new enemy: al-Qaeda. 9/11 changed the way Americans lived: from checking into airports to worrying about white powder in envelopes to stray bags left on park benches.
Invading Afghanistan
An immediate consequence of 9/11 was the Bush Administration's decision to punish the regime that had given refuge to al-Qaeda and its leader Osama bin Laden. Initially deemed a success with the ouster of the Taliban from power in Kabul, the war in the mountainous nation was overshadowed by the consequent war in the deserts of Iraq — but it did not end. Indeed, even as American involvement in Iraq was tapering off, the war in Afghanistan grew graver and graver, with the Taliban looming as a resurrected force.
Iraq, March 2003
Declaring the military campaign an integral part of the War on Terror, the Bush Administration invaded Iraq and did what the president's father, George H. W. Bush chose not to do: conquer the entire country and oust its dictator Saddam Hussein. The rationale for the adventure was the existence of weapons of mass destruction that Saddam could potentially share with his supposed allies in al-Qaeda. However, the impious Saddam was hardly a natural friend of the radical Islamists; and no weapons of mass destruction were ever found. The war, however, proved to be a very real quagmire, taking thousands of American lives and, with scandals like Abu Ghraib, leaving the country deeply divided.
Tsunami, December 2004
Amid America's debacles, Mother Nature decided to shrug and an earthquake off Sumatra sent enormous waves all across the Indian Ocean. Perhaps 200,000 people were killed in a matter of hours.
Hurricane Katrina, Sept. 1, 2005
When natural disaster struck America, the physical dimensions were not as gigantic as the Indian Ocean tsunami but the psychological effect was tremendous. The city of New Orleans, so integral to America's self-image, drowned when its levies gave way. And the almost callous ineffectiveness of all levels of government to respond to the calamity further eroded the myth of American exceptionalism.
Market Meltdown September 13, 2008
A financial crisis was undeniable by September 2008, when Lehman Brothers failed. Fear and panic spread around the world rapidly. But if you live in Brazil or China, you have had a pretty good decade economically. The meltdown of 2008, however, put things in grim perspective for Americans. The median U.S. household income in 2000 was $52,500. In 2008, it was $50,303. In 2000, 11.3% of Americans were living below the poverty line. By 2008, that number was 13.2%.
The Ponziest Scheme of All, Oct. 2008
The living breathing symbol of America's economic squalor is prisoner 61727-054, a.k.a. Bernie Madoff, now rotting away in a Butner, North Carolina jail cell doing 150 years for orchestrating the biggest Ponzi scheme in the history of humanity. His fraud, uncovered in late 2008, capped years of living on the brink of economic collapse: from a housing bubble fueled by cheap money to excessive borrowing set ablaze by derivatives, so-called financial weapons of mass destruction.
The Disintegration of Detroit
The American auto industry virtually vanished as a result of decades of complicity and ineptitude on the part of GM, Chrysler and the UAW. Management would pile on wage hikes and perks and in return the union would rule out strikes, even though both sides must have realized the amount being paid out to workers was unsustainable. Meanwhile, Detroit turned out ugly, low quality cars with shameful gas mileage, a production line overseen by layers of redundant management that relied on amateurish financial controls and reinforced by insular thinking cultivated by decades of outsized market share. When the collapse came, it came hard.
Guantanamo
Perhaps the most difficult development of the decade for Americans was the transformation of their global image from sole superpower and good-guy to evil empire and trampler of human rights. Already tainted by the scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison, American ideals were furthere eroded by the extra-judicial treatment and brutal interrogation techniques at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. To the rest of the world, Gitmo dimmed the light of liberty that America claimed to safeguard.
