I read a book by Chuck Klosterman which made a great observation, that all of us reminisce on the generation 2 decades ago and look up on it fondly: for example, in the '70s people looked fondly back at the '50s, in the '90s people looked back fondly upon the '70s, and so on. Certainly for me during the 2010's I looked back at the Nineties with longing and wish for it all just to back to those glorious times, and now, firmly in the 2020's, I look back and wish it was the 2000's (Naughts?) Nah, 2001-2005 were my high school years, not much to look back on with fondness, only a lot of homework and wasted effort on my part writing essays that no one cared about, all so I could get into a state school and find out I wasn't really an especially smart person. Klosterman's book about the 1990's is spot on, though, about some of those events I was way too young to remember, like the Gulf War (against Iraq who had invaded Kuwait) was actually a win for the U.S., but a loss for George H.W. Bush in popularity, who had hihertho been a VERY popular president, the role of Ross Perot in turning the election for Clinton. Perot was a nobody with a lot of money who suddenly gained massive support in a time when TikTok and social media or even the Internet was even around yet, and did the unprecedented thing of getting 19% of the vote as an independent. Conversely, George H.W. Bush seemed invincible and well on his way to winning a 2nd term in office in early 1991, only to lose it all and be voted out of office by November 1992, to Bill Clinton who had sexual allegations buzzing around him already then, who the Democrats ran against George H.W. Bush because they didn't want to waste a better political prospect against the juggernaut Bush! (imagine that, Clinton was a sacrificial lamb!) The same thing happened for Donald Trump, just a billionaire reality TV host in early 2015 (everyone thought him running as a president as a joke, with doubters every step of the way that Rubio would beat him, Bush would beat him, he wouldn't get the Republican nomination, and when he did get the Republican nomination that Hilary would easily beat him.....until he won in December 2016.
Kind of going along with my patience (see previous entry), it is worth noting that most things in life seem so miniscule in possibility before they happen, but then after they do happen they seem so obvious to happen because well, it 100% did happen. Kind of like the Nelson Mandela quote, "everything is impossible until you do it. Perhaps MJ and I can apply this to our efforts to have a child: we've faced a lot of obstacles and failures in this endeavor and it's been frustrating, but when we do get pregnant it will seem like it was also going to happen.
Right now it's early 2023, and we have another presidential election in November 2024: someone like Trump or Perot could emerge from nowhere as a dark horse candidate and become President by then; it's possible on both parties (and also independents too)... Democrats aren't guaranteed to run Biden again, and Republicans have this internal war within their party between Trump and DeSantis, but will someone else come out of the fray there?
It's hard to believe, but in twenty years, in the 2040's, if I'm still alive, (if human beings are still alive) we'll look back upon the 2020's fondly as that time right before the 2024 election, before it turned into chaos, or even look back fondly at the pandemic years, remember that time we all sat home and had all the time in the world.....even now I see everyone outside and getting back to "normal" life.
MJ and I hosted one of MJ's friends who's a decade younger than us (boy did that make us feel old) who said she also remembered people singing Miley Cyrus's "See You Again" back in the Naughties, and it just took me back to college days, late 2007, drunk students at 2AM singing "My best friend Leslie said oh she's just being Miley...." those were the days.
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