2000s

The decade that brought us Y2K and the growing uneasiness, among the more zanier elements of the population. It's the decade that gave us internet primacy and the birth of the professional internet. Incorporation of technology in our lifestyles reached seamless new heights. And the old dazzle of corporate television waned on, imploding into reality show obscurity.

Overall, it was a decade wrought by dramatics. There was glam in the rise of SUV Hummers and the jolt of the coming of age of gay acceptance. There was decadence in the lavishness of corporate pleasure and even greater deceit and pomposity in the great halls of power. There was terror and the aftershock and the aftermath from it we now know.

The rise of laptops and cell phones certainly changed us, for better or for worse, although I tend to believe the latter. And although the American nation spent the entire decade sitting in the den of treacherous wolves while being sabotaged in a top-down Ponzi scheme, a mild social evolution took place. Questions seemed more important than before. Authority never seemed so crooked and evidently rigged. The bad guys kept on winning, while most kept counting precious dollars shredded away on the rising prices of wheat, milk, corn and meat. Nothing could be taken as absolute anymore. Attitudes mellowed and some of the former 'rules' of the game no longer exist. Yet, while this instance produced certain positive change, there remain lamentable losses due to this new embodiment of Americana.

The peak and fall of the development of suburbia signnalled a new age and 'urban renewal' in the form of gentrification irked millions and uprooted thousands. A decade of lost opportunity and unfulfilled dreams was it in some ways. The shutting down of America and her proud business establishments was more than disheartening, gutwrenching really. Even worse, the intelligence of the nation faced continual insults and the movie industry's made-in-Hollywood trademark factory movie complex marched intellectual filmwork off the screen.

But not all I've mentioned was bad. Much good still rocked the '00s, it just got a little harder to find.

Nevertheless New Year's Eve promenades on and the passion, heartache and joy of the '00s will pass. The decade will continue in modern memory as a pivotal era in the history of mankind. But either way, its victores and pitfalls are now enshrined. May the 2010s carry on.