What's Been and What's Ben

10. Michael Jackson (2009) – by shear news volume over trivial things. An unscientific survey found he was the dominantly covered celebrity of the first decade of the third millennium. From child-touching to baby-dangling to radical cosmetic surgery to his final death from an extreme overdose of operating-room anesthesia, Jackson dominated the decade and in many ways represents America’s boundless excess.

9. Boxing Day Tsunami (2004) – a quarter of a million people dead from a black swan incident that we as a species were unfamiliar with. Seven billion dollars in aide was provided by countries all over the world with over 100 billion being given by each of the following countries in order: US, Australia, Germany, UK, Canada, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, Ireland, Taiwan, and Denmark.

8. China (2008) – after hosting the Olympics the rise of China to rule to world was moved one step closer. It is important to note that for hundreds of years Westerners have predicted the rise of China to become the dominant power in the world. Their rapid industrialization and embracing of capitalism have given them a noteworthy 8-10% increase in GDP every year.

7. Katrina (2005) – the Tsunami in the Pacific may have killed 100 times more people, but Katrina caused more economic damaged and showed the weakness in response by a developed country. Kanye West said it best, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”

6. Invasion of Iraq (2003) – in what could be considered the biggest magic trick in history, the Bush White House put some yellow cake in Colin Powell’s hands and started a war with the other. The war defined the Bush Doctrine of preemptive invasions to prevent a future attack. This action divided America internally and from the world around it – squandering the goodwill the world community had given us. I was for the war before I was against it.

5. Near total economic collapse (2008) – that could have sucked more than it did. Thankfully we ensured that bankers remained super-wealthy and did not change weak antiquated regulations. This was the result of too many smart people going into business and trying to create as much imaginary money as possible at the cost of the mutual funds they tricked millions into buying into.

4. Obama’s election (2007-08) – imagine you are in a bar in 2006 and some says “…and then we elected a black president.” You would think it was a joke. The nation elected the anti-Bush and made everybody feel good about it. In what was likely the election of my lifetime, with both parties nominee in contention until the last few primaries/caucuses. Obama was elected not as just a black president, but as a presidential candidate who happened to be black (technically he is half and half). His name only hints as the many dramatic themes of the election of Iraq Hussein Osama.

3. Bush’s stolen election (2000) – Bush stole the election from both Al Gore in the general and John McCain in the primaries. Karl Rove may be the big player behind this, but either way, it sets the stage for the next decade. McCain had nasty robo-calls in South Carolina launched against him that asked if the answerer knew about McCain’s illegitimate black baby – who was really his adopted daughter. This played on racists elements of the republican party enough to throw the republican nomination to the loser coke-head drunk repeat-business-failure son of a former president. A few months later Bush had the conservative supreme court stop the recount in Florida hours before they would have declared Al Gore the winner. The results in Florida were delivered by State Auditor and chair of Bush’s presidential campaign in Florida. Oh! and his brother was governor.

2. Internet 2.0 (2003-09) – the Internet has brought the world closer together than anything before. Instant sharing of information across the world through words, images, sounds, and videos has changed the lives of billions of people in a dramatically short time. With Internet 2.0 (content creation, not just consumption) individual people are free to write blogs, post on message boards, vote on digg.com, post themselves singing on youtube, and network through a number of social-networking sites. Used for everything from entertainment to science to create a world that could only be dreamed of two decades ago. Almost any question can be answered by simply googling it.

1. 9/11/ (2001) – no other series of event are referred to only by the date on which they fell with numbers already present in the psych of Americans as the telephone number of emergency services. On 9/12 every single U.S. flags was sold out and everybody was a New Yorker after 3000 died in cold blood. This was the largest in a string of attacks on Americans by radical-Islamic terrorists such as the USS Cole, shoe bomber, Fort Hood gunman, and underwear bomber. After going to war against terrorism in Afghanistan a few months afterward, we have yet to capture Osama bin Laden – the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. These events defined the Bush presidency (originally he wanted to be the education president) and the next decade as U.S. foreign policy was shaped by the reaction and over-reaction to these events. The fear created by these events caused a reduction in civil liberties and an expansion of the previously contracting post cold war U.S. military.