There I was, casting about for a brilliant topic upon which to declaim, finding zilch, zip, nada … a big fat zero.
That’s it!
Is there any better way to name the past decade? The Gay Nineties, the Roaring Twenties, the Dirty Thirties, the Nifty Fifties. Because they were periods of war and upheaval, the teens, forties and sixties didn’t get nicknames. The rest weren’t worth the effort. Perhaps this one isn’t, either.
How about the “oughts” or “naughts?” In a past life, I remember having to repeat numbers back to the railroad dispatcher as “Engine 3015, three naught one five” and so on. My grandpa used to declare he was born in Nineteen Ought Two. This week I’m experimenting on a Thirty Ought Six rifle.
Then there is history. Things change, yet stay the same, right? The 1900s were known as the “trust-busting” era, when “progressives” brought the robber barons to heel. Well, the “progressives” are still around, and there’s still plenty of trust being busted.
But it’s the wrong kind of busting.
Our military and police (not TSA, and not the courts) still both enjoy net-positive public ratings. They dang well better … public trust is their job.
But I dare you to name one profession or institution that enjoys a higher level of public confidence than 10 years ago. Can anyone claim individual or institutional standards are improving, in terms of ethics, performance, or simple competence?
Labor unions, government and big business pretty much share the bottom of the basement with, big surprise, the health care sector.
Since at least 1999, USA Today/Gallup has asked “which of the following will be the biggest threat to the country in the future?”
Big Labor went up from 8 percent to 10 percent, Big Business (our robber barons are still here) went from 24 percent to 32 percent, and Big Government declined from 65 percent to “only” 55 percent. But 2009’s results were collected in March. Congress today hangs tough at 65 percent disapproval.
Why? Some probably think Al Gore “ought” to have been president (naught me), America “ought” “naught” to have gone into the sandbox, “ought” to have nuked Osama, “ought” “naught” bail out AIG, “naught” invested with Bernie Madoff.
Surely, a bunch of us are thinking we “ought” to have picked a different line of work, or won the lottery, but did “naught” – and I guess there’s the rub: So much has been left undone, done wrong, or not done at all.
In 2000, many of us had expectations. A new presidency, a new century, a new millennium, a New Economy, in which big things would happen for better or worse.
Osama’s killers upset the applecart, America locked and loaded, and then what? We’re stuck, propping up a bunch of countries we’d rather not, and for all that, the Talibanistanians sure don’t think the jihad is over. The job isn’t done.
President Obama just scored a Nobel Peace Prize for what the Norwegians HOPE he does, not for what he’s done.
Where are we here at home? Rather than face the deficit, Congress raises the debt limit. What about our borders, our jobs going overseas? What about energy and climate?
More locally, we’re hanging. Now that the “nouveau West” boom is over, what next? The old West potlines and mills aren’t running – here or anywhere else. What next, where next, and when?
Maybe “What’s next?” is the wrong question. We all learn early that unfinished homework gets an incomplete at best. Left undone? A big, fat zero. What’s on the checks when we fail to deliver on a contract? You bet, a big, fat zero.
Hey, I’ve scored my share of those beauties, all because I failed to pay proper attention to the here and now, at least until the job was done. Now we have left a decade unfinished – our big, fat Zeroes.