It seems like five minutes ago that I was in the back of a cab riding through a glistening Times Square at dusk, marveling at how well everything was going in the world.
It was just before New Year’s 2000, and I swear I said to myself, “Remember this moment, because things may never be this good again.”
Rudy Giuliani had turned New York City around; the national economy was booming; America was the lone superpower in the world and the Internet was making every new day more exciting than the last.
The only worry at the time — the big story of the day — was that computers might go haywire when the Millennial arrived. I remember how plucky I thought the Chinese were for ordering their airline officials into the air at midnight on New Year’s Eve to ensure that they had done everything possible to forestall a “Y2K” computer meltdown. For a bunch of communists, they sure showed a keen understanding of the principle of self interest.
The Yankees had just won another World Series; John Elway was on his way to a second Super Bowl victory, and a device called the BlackBerry had just been introduced, allowing people to return messages on what basically looked like a pager.
Everything wasn’t perfect in December ’99, but on balance, things were pretty darned good.
Fast forward 16 years and every new day has become a head-shaking, let-me-get-this-straight moment.
Where even to begin?
There are men with guns walking into rooms full of people — routinely — and shooting everyone in them. They fire until they are stopped or run out of ammunition.
One killed 20 first graders and six teachers.
And that’s just the Americans.
Overseas, lunatic religious fanatics are shooting up theaters and restaurants, blowing planes out of the sky with soda can bombs, chopping off heads and keeping entire villages of girls as sex slaves. They film their atrocities for the whole world to see.
Thousands of Americans and Europeans have watched their carnage videos — and joined them.
Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi are both dead, and reasonable people wish they were still around. Japan is rearming itself for the first time since World War II, and we’re happy about it.
On U.S. college campuses, students are in deep discussion about something called “white privilege,” while others interrupt study halls shouting “black lives matter.” Textbooks are marked with “trigger warnings” to spare the feelings of our fragile youth, whose parents are paying upward of a quarter-million dollars for an undergraduate degree.
The president is black — of The United States — and race relations are at their worst in decades.
Bruce Jenner is now a girl.
Let’s see. What else . . .
Donald Trump is leading the Republican field for president. He doesn’t understand the issues and he’s insulted half the country, but his supporters are undeterred: Trump’s going to build a Great Wall of China on our southern border and outlaw international pole vaulting.
Marijuana’s back. After telling kids to stay off the stuff for 50 years, it’s now legal to manufacture pot lollipops and lipsticks in some states. Heroin’s back, too.
The national debt that took 42 presidents and 224 years to accumulate was nearly doubled in eight years by the 43rd president, a Republican, and doubled again by the 44th, a Democrat.
Speaking of Democrats, 56 percent of them now hold favorable view of socialism. Meanwhile, neo-capitalist China has become the world’s largest economy.
Have I forgotten anything other than airliners full of people being flown into the World Trade Towers?
Oh yes, all those improvements Giuliani made? They’re being rolled back by the current mayor in the name of progress.
If I’m still in the back of that cab, someone, please, slap me awake.
William F. B. O’Reilly is a Republican consultant.
