Dear 2010; Be not like 2009
Please let us never go through sh-t like that ever again
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, January 1, 2010
id you feel it? Did you reach up and lick the full, pregnant, bursting blue moon on New Year's Eve? Did you howl and wail and stomp your feet and raise your glass high and say oh my God let us now move and dance and shimmy and finally, finally get this nasty nefarious monkey of a doomed decade off our collective backs once and for all? I hope you did. It was a portentous night in many ways, this particular New Year's Eve, and not just because of the auspicious moon. It was, most notably, the end of the Aughts, the Zeros, the Zips, and everything they contained, hurled, dragged us down into like a Goliath tarantula drags down an unsuspecting sparrow.
(And yes, I also acknowledge how, technically speaking, the real end of the decade isn't until this time next year. Whatever. We're going with feel, energy, the flip and lurch of time and consciousness. You going to argue with that)?
Let us just say it outright: Good riddance to the Zeros. It was, as widely noted, the decade from hell. It was easily one of the worst periods in recent American history, upwards of 3600 days drenched in fear and ignorance and bitter divisiveness, nipples and anthrax and macho shock n' awe, economic implosions and endless conservative puling about God and gays and terrorism, all slashed through with so much political misprision and presidential ineptitude it's going to require many more years until we the deep, humiliating scars inflicted by Dubya & Co. are fully healed.
But at last, we now have a moment, a ripe opportunity to turn away from that dark period, that rank era, and look ahead. What will next the decade hold? What magic and pain, splendid innovation and unexpected smackdown could it possibly offer up? The possibilities are astounding. The possibilities have rarely felt so... possible. This much we know: It almost certainly can't be worse than the last decade. And in fact, the signs are plentiful indeed that it will be much, much better.
Evidence: We finally have a president -- and will have a president, for much of the next decade -- who is simply light years more gifted, articulate, diplomatic, calm, fair-minded, astute, eloquent and (still) downright globally inspiring than any in decades. No matter your stance on the inherited war in Afghanistan, no matter the fistful of failures and disappointments to date, I remain fully convinced I'm witnessing the finest, most exciting, historic, deeply effective president in my lifetime, and probably yours. Don't believe it? Call me in 2020, and let's review.
The best part: We don't yet know his full capabilities, his true range. Right now Obama remains saddled with merely trying to unbury us, stem the hemorrhaging, recover some of the brutal BushCo losses. Such a task can't help but be frontloaded with bad news. But here's my prediction: once he can more fully dedicate his energies toward creating something new, instead of repairing the old and decrepit? Exhilarating.
Already we have a huge, historic new health care bill, the biggest shift in a bloated, impossibly fragmented industry in six decades. No one thought it was even possible, much less in his first year. The bill is imperfect and gutted and contains no public option or single-payer plans and appears to make no one happy on any side of the debate. But the truth is, it just might actually be far more loaded with potentially revolutionary ideas than many, including me, even realize. Is it worth considering?
What else? Take your pick. Assuming even modestly successful scenarios, the coming decade will see the end of two botched, miserable, costly wars begun by a president who had little clue as to what the hell he was doing but plenty of hawkish cronyism and false cowboy Christian machismo to make him do it.
A collapsed auto industry is cross-breeding with a green energy revolution and consumer awareness to create an unprecedented influx of cool, small cars not seen since the Japanese invasion of the '70s, plug-in and hybrids and tiny badass European models and who knows what else, as ingenuity kicks in and automakers finally realize Americans don't necessarily want 18 cup holders and 7mpg and the ability to traverse a Tasmanian flood plain when all they ever do is traverse a Walgreens parking lot.
There is no more Michael Jackson. There will soon be no more Oprah. There will be no more Tyra Banks. There will be less Simon Cowell. There will be far less Jay Leno (praise!) No more Jon & Kate. Harry Potter will wave his wand one last time and explode in a shower of Flugglewumps and repressed hormonal Zigglewaddles, or whatever he does at the end of that insufferable series. See? Things are looking up already.
Will Facebook and Twitter survive? Sure. Will something new and potentially even more useful and addictive come along in a dizzying tidal wave of confounding tech joy to supplant their power and influence in nearly the exact the same way they supplanted MySpace and Friendster? Count on it. Right along with an Apple iSlate/iPad world-altering game-changer. Hey, no one thought Apple could possibly make a dent in the cellphone world either. And then, boom: One gizmo to rule them all.
There might very well be a revolution in Iran, on a scale and of a fiery democratic pulse no one really thought possible, given the oppressive, pathetic, ultraconservative regime in power. So impressive and inspiring might this revolution be that lazy, fat America might just sit up and go, oh right, that's how you fight for your freedoms and hold your government accountable and push back against religious intolerance, misogyny, dogma. Now I remember.
China will outpace the US in every category except porn and gun murders and tongue kissing in the streets. Meanwhile, India will finally allow its first on-screen kiss in a Bollywood movie, if they really want to be taken seriously as a true international film powerhouse and not a brightly colored cartoon factory. Just a thought.
Climate change will cause enough ice to melt in the mountains of Turkey that Noah's Ark will finally be revealed as verifiable truth. Archaeologists will discover the big ol' boat was full of Buddha statues and Shakti icons and golden Dionysus sculptures and huge stone fertility penises, giant wine vessels and goddess offerings and the seeds of many hallucinogenic plants, indicating it was actually the site the first and greatest pagan bacchanalia party cruise of all time.
Gay marriage will continue apace, as increasing numbers of states and nations across the planet understand that love is indeed liquid and dynamic and evolutionary and is not, and never really was, meant to be defined/confined by narrow-minded, lumpish religious misinterpretation.
Will all be positive and inspiring? Will there be dancing in the streets and recovered tuna stocks and free Wi-Fi in the Gaza Strip? Will all brooding teen vampires shut up and die? What are you, high?
A million things could go wrong, and almost certainly will. There is no shortage of ignorance, religious puling, teabagging deathpanel birther Palin-esque whinebot Glenn Beck laughingstocks. But if the '00s were the decade of alarmism and a desperate clinging to Christian Puritan myth, let the '10s be the decade of integrity and movement, experimentation and possibility and a complete, messy, fundamental overhaul of all we thought we were. What, you have a better idea?
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