Time Magazine calls the decade from 2000-2009 the “Decade From Hell”!
In so many ways, it was just that! Notice that it coincides with the eight years of the Bush Administration after the contested election of 2000 between George W. Bush and Al Gore.
An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows the American people have a very negative view of the decade now ending. Fifty eight percent saw the decade as negative, with only twelve percent perceiving it positively, and 29 percent seeing it as “fair”, which is seen as basically neutral.
The major negative developments in percentage were the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the mortgage and housing crisis, the Iraq war, stock market crash, and Hurricane Katrina. All five of these can be attributed to blunders of the Bush Administration.
The positive developments of the decade, according to the poll, were in science and technology and race relations.
But the negative developments included by percentage the following: economic prosperity, moral values, treating others with respect, nation’s sense of unity, peace and national security, health and well being, and the environment, with the negative percentages ranging from 74 percent down to 37 percent, with only the last two under 50 percent.
Overall, we have lived through a dreadful decade, and it makes one wonder whether the next decade will see improvement in these different areas, or whether we are in chronic decline as a nation! 