1995

I liked the idea of 1995 being an extremely important year in world history. It was also the time when I was making the JC to NS transition, which is a big thing in a guy's life. You have 12 years of basically the same old shit, and suddenly, you have to adjust to national service, then university, then working life and beyond. Things suddenly change very fast.

This book lists five events: the proliferation of the internet, the OJ Simpson trial, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Dayton accords, and Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky.

The most amazing thing about this book, when I leafed through it, is that it didn't mention Donald Trump. And that's when I realised that the book was written in 2015. By 2016, three of these events would have been associated with the rise of Donald Trump to the presidency. The internet, and what it had become by 2016, would have become the fake news machine that would drive the twin shocks of Brexit and Donald Trump. The Oklahoma City bombing was a foreshadow of the rise of the alt right that was briefly resurgent in 2017. (But would be battered down by another hate mob shortly after). And Hillary Clinton would forever be tarnished by the way she responded to the Clinton Lewinsky scandal, and questions would be raised over whether it cost her the presidency, and cost the rest of the having to weather through Trump in the White House.

In 2020, there would be a big trial that would demonstrate that acquitted doesn't mean innocent, with Trump instead of OJ Simpson.

It's an interesting point to make that the Dayton accords was a path towards a bolder foreign policy, but sometimes you have to wonder what that bolder foreign policy would have looked like if Al Gore was president. I think that 9/11 would still have happened, and the US would have still gotten into Afghanistan, but not necessarily Iraq.

But three of these events did contribute to the sense that all was not right in the American politisphere. It had been bad enough that Ronald Reagan had dismantled much of the workings of the federal government, but 1995 showed that the system was not working in three ways. First, the OJ trial was a gross miscarriage of justice, and put the thought into peoples' minds that the judicial system wasn't working. Second, the Bill Clinton impeachment in 1998 was some indication that there was a Congrss that would stop at nothing to score cheap political points. And the Oklahoma bombing was basically a protest against the Federal government – not sure for what, but it was a reflection of distrust in the system. It would be too dramatic to say that the US was at its apex and was about to go downhill, but it was an unwanted harbinger.

Because the focus of 1995 was on the US, they didn't mention some of the things that were going on in 1995 in UK popular culture. Eric Cantona karate kicked a fan, was banned for months, and when he came back, he sealed his place in Manchester United folklore by leading them to another title. Britpop was at its apex, as was trip hop, it was an apex of a wonderful decade for UK pop. Bjork released “Post”, and her list of collaborators on that album was a who's who of tastemakers for that decade. Radiohead released their first of many great albums with “The Bends”. (“Pablo Honey” does not count as a great album).

I think in a way 1995 was a great year for the US, but it signalled some kind of a bookend. Another year that people considered to be pivotal in the US history of being a strong nation was 1945, after Victory over Japan and Victory in Europe. America had basically conquered the world, or at least half of it. And I would mention the era just before 1945, as the work of the Greatest Generation, who struggled through the Depression and the Second World War and built something great and wondrous. At the same time, I would also think about the era starting from the end of the Cold War to 9/11, as another smaller kind of greatness. During this time, the US helped to end the Cold War gracefully, spread the internet around the world, create the greatest start-up scene in the world in Silicon Valley, spread neoliberalism around the world, expanded NATO and the EC, help end the former Yugoslavia wars, and to a smaller extent, helped to deal with AIDS in Africa. These were wonderful things, but after that, I fear that America, owing to the faults and the stresses within its own society, is maybe on the way down.