When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, I was working in a bank. I’ll never forget one of the 30-ish tellers saying something like, “that’s the problem–you younger folks don’t have as much history as we did, back when there was Vietnam, Watergate, the Oil Crisis, the Iranian Hostage Crisis….”
Flashforward to the present, where Tom Maguire writes he’s got all the history he needs right now, thankyouverymuch!
I have been chiding my kids, over the years, that they are living through entirely too much history. Do folks still remember the once-momentous Clinton impeachment of 1998? The Florida recount of 2000? (We do!). Both were eclipsed by 9/11 and the war in Iraq.
And now we have the flooding of New Orleans and the destruction of the Gulf Coast, which will, I Boldly Predict, roil American politics for years or decades as people rethink the roles of local, state, and federal government.
He’s got some suggestions on how that will play out. In the meantime, Glenn Reynolds has a roundup of excellent suggestions that will, sadly, largely go unheeded by the various levels of government as to how to plan for the next disaster.
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