We Don't Want a Crappy Millenium!

Even before the new millennium began, we were all a bit jittery.  Y2K made Americans stay home in nervous anticipation as other people around the world celebrated.  In addition, the United States beefed up its security in fear of a terrorist attack - on what should have been a day of worldwide celebration and fun.

Since that cold winter night where we failed to party like it was 1999, the new millennium hasn't exactly gotten off to a good start for the United States of America.  First we had an election meltdown in November/December 2000, seriously undermining our confidence in the U.S. electoral process.  Then, we had the "dot.com" bubble burst in late 2000 and 2001, leading to an economic contraction after the boom years of the 1990s.  Next - and worst of all by far - we had the 9/11 terrorist attacks that fundamentally altered the state of our nation.  Now, over the past two years, we have been confronted by a series of devastating natural disasters, culminating with Hurricane Katrina - the first hurricane in modern history to render a major American city completely unlivable.

To make matters worse, since the start of the new millennium we have found ourselves being "led" by a group of extreme, right-wing ideologues who have virtually reversed all the domestic accomplishments of the previous decade, while going to war with the wrong country for the wrong reasons and turning the global community against us.

I'll tell you, if the next 995 years of the millennium are going to be anything like the first 5, I request that I be frozen until the year 3000!

This is not the first time the world community has faced backwardness.  After the fall of the Greek and Roman empires, the "Dark Ages" were a de-evolution from years past. Part of the reason was due to infrastructures of old falling apart, isolating the world and preventing progress due to one-sighted theocratic and totalitarian rule.

It doesn't have to be this way again.  In the United States, the Post-War era of the 1950s and 1960s created a boost in innovation like no other period in the history of the world. From 1950 to 1965, we developed an interstate highway system, crafted an extensive national energy grid, passed civil rights and voting rights acts while ending "Jim Crow" segregation, and connected the entire nation with improved commercial airlines and widespread telecommunications infrastructure (including television) that allowed for a vastly expanded flow of information across the country.

The boom years of the 1990s produced cell phones and the internet, creating 21st century technology a little ahead of schedule. As a result, communications and information are now available nearly anywhere at any time; a dramatic change from the 1980s, which now seem like ancient history.

Given the dramatic achievements over the past 50 years, the contrast with the first 5 years of the new millennium are even more glaring.  Today, we are told that the world is going to run out of oil, with prices having nearly tripled since the start of the new millennium.  We are told that the polar ice caps will melt, the sea levels will rise, and temperatures will sizzle as our reliance on fossil fuels dooms us to terrible ecological consequences, like the one we witnessed last week in the Gulf Coast. 

For many people, it's nearly impossible to afford to buy a home near a city with a decent job market.  Years of living beyond our means have created debt that will cripple future generations for years to come.  The first few years of the new millennium have shown that everything we have built can be placed in jeopardy.  Poverty is now increasing at an alarming rate.  The internet is wrought with security failures, leading to cyber terrorism and identify theft.  Our space program has had an array of disasters and delays, and our airlines are going out of business.  Our national energy grid is in disarray and our interstate highway system needs constant upgrades we cannot afford.  It almost looks like our empire is falling apart.

But before we all jump off a bridge whose capital investment still hasn't been paid off, perhaps all that we really need to do is change.  After all, the periods of extensive growth in the 1950s/60s and the 1990s all came after the resolution of major global conflicts and the unleashing of our national energies in a constructive direction.  After World War II, we enjoyed enhanced innovation and renewed government investment in the nation's infrastructure (including the GI Bill for education), while the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s returned us to a time of peace where we could focus development on advancements to benefit the entire population.

Adherence to rigid ideology and conservatism has rarely brought about particularly effective results.  Too much faith and reliance on the market during the 1920s helped cause the Great Depression, while the paranoia of the Cold War brought us McCarthyism, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Vietnam.  The "Republican Revolution" of the 1980s created massive budget deficits and a soaring public debt, with military spending given priority over improvements in health care, education, and other basic infrastructure.

Arguably, in fact, the greatest periods of the last millennium were also the times of greatest openness and change.  The Renaissance, for example, was a time when exploration connected a planet that many people had thought was flat, while art and culture blossomed (Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci) after several hundred years of relative stagnation.  The Age of Enlightenment was - among other things - a time when our Founding Fathers created the world's first successful Democratic nation.

In other words, a climate of reform and open-mindedness appear to be necessary pre-conditions for unleashing energy, creativity and innovation needed to make the world a better place.  Unfortunately, today's "conservative" leaders don't seem to appreciate this, and the results have thus far been tragic.  Things can't always remain the same and we have to constantly be learning and growing and changing in order to adapt.  America has grown from infancy into successful adulthood, but we now face a mid-life crisis.  America used to be the center of new ideas, but the world is changing so fast that we are starting to fall behind.  What we need now is some youthful exuberance, fueled by new leaders unafraid of change, and willing to finance important innovations and explore emerging concepts.

Without proactive anticipation of the new challenges facing the world, we will become reactive and complacent and we will undoubtedly fail.  Government holds the key; from Federal to state and local levels.  Ask George W. Bush or even Jerry Kilgore how they see the world 5, 10, or even 50 years from now.  Do they have a vision and a plan to prepare us for a future wrought with challenges we haven't even begun to face?  If so, we haven't heard it yet.

The fact is, as long as we are stuck in narrow-minded, reactionary, "conservative" times, our millennium will only get worse and worse.  That's why we need to elect leaders who are focused on the promises of the future, not the seeming certitudes of an imagined past.  We need leaders who will look creatively and energetically for answers, rather than confine themselves in rigid ideological straightjackets.  Today, the fate of our state, our nation, and our world is in the hands of voters like you and me.  We have the power, whether we realize it or not, to change the trajectory of our common future.  Instead of criticizing leaders who call for change when we need it the most, why not join in a common effort to create a better world for all of us?  Then, we can work on making this millennium truly the great one we dreamed of when we were young.

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