Parasitic excuse for a decade needs a name
It's a task that ought to be undertaken in long darkness
Let the great debate begin: It is time to name this filthy backwash of a decade.
This became evident when the VH1 pop culture channel had to punt on its silly "I love the '80s," "I love the '90s" format, going with "I love the New Millennium" instead of using a number. When VH1 punts on the name game, you know this is going to call for the advanced branding team.
Maybe it's only a moody bitterness, but it seems clear that only this vile decade could be so lost and depraved that it eludes casual definition in a way usually reserved for the stench of rotting flotsam. We entered the decade with a balanced budget, a growing confidence in our new Internet economy and relative (ain't it always?) peace.
Suddenly we had the deadliest attack on mainland America since were were killing each other in the Civil War. Then the slow greed-fueled dismantling of our once-proud economy, and now we exit the decade deeply broke with out teenagers swooning in Tweetered lust over vampires and zombies.
Still, even the wretched of the space-time continuum deserve a name, if only so we can be more focused in our damnation.
Some are pushing the lame idea of the "aught" decade — a retro term, because it was widely used for the decade of 1900 to 1909. Or even "double aught."
But they get it wrong. As much as the '70s has to be held accountable for disco, the '80s for greed and the '90s for, well, more greed, "aught" works, but we need to spell it like it is.
The "ought" decade.
Because if there's a theme for this parasitic excuse of a decade, it's what we "ought" to have learned and done.
We ought to have learned from the key event of the decade — 9-11. Remember when, for maybe an hour, it seemed like we might rise as one, united into a new future untethered from our petty squabbles? I was driving past the Pentagon when the plane hit, heard the explosion and watched as smoke billowed across the Potomac River.
Our Leader seized the historic moment, urging us to shop. Knowing when somebody is letting me off easy, I myself bought a new fridge and stove. This seemed somehow less of a contribution than that made by my nephew, Tony, who immediately joined the Army and went to war in Iraq. It prompted my sister, his mom, to ask one of the best policy questions I'd never heard: If they can train Tony to fight and die for democracy in Iraq in a few months, why does it take years to train the Iraqis?
Yep — we ought know better.
We ought to have taken one look at Enron, those smartest guys in the room, and wondered who else out there was living in fantasy land. But we didn't, instead giving that disaster slightly less analysis than we'd give the Patriot's recent offensive decline.
The lists go on and on ... but hindsight offers such limited bitterness, let's look ahead a bit.
We ought to have learned to limit the size of Wall Street firms, and to re-install the limitations that were removed in the '90s. Instead, we have more promises — even the wildly doomed firms that graded the debt that crashed, the blind refs of the Wall Street game, have escaped significant restructuring. Already, it's business as usual although we're assured things are being seriously studied.
We ought to have learned that homeland security is serious stuff — after all, even some GOP operatives admit that going after President Clinton over relatively personal matters might have been a mistake. Remember when he took the cruise missile shot at Osama bin Laden in 1998 and some accused him of mirroring that "Wag The Dog" movie?
Meanwhile our ports go largely unmonitored and check-on baggage mostly unchecked, but we have grandmothers taking off their shoes before boarding airplanes and casual gate-crashers gaining access to the president.
Aught. It's a word that means "zero," "nothing," "a cipher," or, in just the right context it can over-achieve and imply that battle-cry of today's cultural warriors: "whatever."
It's fitting we consider naming the decade now, as the days draw ever shorter toward the winter solstice, because it's a job best undertaken in long darkness. Maybe there's something better out there, but even if "the Ought Decade" is bad branding, it's still truth in advertising.
(Curtis Robinson is editor of The Portland Daily Sun. Contact him at curtis@portlanddailysun.me.)
