I’m a straight white man of privilege from very modest upbringings who has managed to skate through this life into his 40s with a combination of hard work and dumb luck and of course a head start arriving at a comfortable, pretty good life. But still, when I think about how the last 20 years will be studied in the history books, here’s what comes to mind:
The Gun Violence Years
The War Years
The Security State Years
The Recession Years
The Polarization Years
The Disinformation Years
The Pandemic Years
The Climate Change Years
You can call this pessimistic but, it’s just a fact, you can’t hide from national politics. How they work directly effects how life is in America and our collective experience.
And it’s that collective experience I think is most defined by trauma and pain. Sure, we have the Internet, but not universal healthcare. This is the golden age of television, but white supremacy is allowed to run rampant throughout the country. I certainly love the craft beer craze, but I’d rather everybody got their news from accurate sources who actually do journalism.
Time to do better America. We need to define these coming climate change years by opportunity, equity, and balance.
Time to get to it.
- UPDATE -
There’s an important prologue to these years. The initial years of an American experience that set us up for where we’re at today starting in the 80s:
The Anti-Government Years
The HIV/AIDS Years
The Abortion War Years
