What the historians will say

[Fovea]

about 'the war on terror.'

Historians do not react to the passion of the era, but of their own melieu. If there are such things as historians a generation hence, it will mean that this neocon new century has ended prematurely.

Given that heart warming idea, let us go on and say that doubtless, this putative historian will not understand what America was like in a meaningful way, anymore than you or I understand the great depression.

So this historian (let's call him Jose Odd) will enumerate the ways the terror war was unlike previous American wars. Jose will talk about no bid contracts, idiologically based strategy for the assault, occupation, and administration. He will doubtless have a lot to say about Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Bush that we do not have access to yet-- the sequellae of the Bush II dynasty will doubtless be quite ugly.

He will have the tools to demonstrate how the Norquist/Rove/Abramoff cabal not only bilked America of Billions, but destroyed the dollar, and with it, the American economy.

But his most damning conclusions will be a truely vain effort to justify why the electorate tolerated it for so long. But you see, Jose will be living in a different world, where the occupants have universal sufferage, universal public education, and universal healthcare. Sr. Odd will live in a hotter, more violent weather'd world, but it will be a world that less resembles Orwell's image of a boot stepping eternally on a human face.

Jose will not understand, in the end, was the devil take the hindmost, I got mine, SUV on the freeway existential nature of Anno Domini 2K America. He will understand terrorism. Terrorism is not going to go away. But he will not understand what it feels like to live in a culture that celebrates its uniqueness through consumption that not only poisons the rest of the world, but perverts the soul of the consumer.

Big Box Exurbia will not have quite disappeared yet, like towns on the blue highways frozen in WPA America, ChumpUSA stores will be used for storing things, and some will convert to 20th century antiques. And by Jose's time, there may still be some internal combustion vehicles, but not many. Travel economy in Jose's day will be measured in meters per person per joule, not miles per gallon per car.

That fact alone will mean that Jose will fail to get the real emotional addiction driving the war on terror- cheap gas and the myth of the open highway. He will say it, but he will not understand it.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

1. I can't even imagine what "history" will be

like with all the minutia of our existence they will have to work. The hardest thing in the history of our time will be editing books to under 2k pages or so, I would imagine.

[Fovea]

3. Jose from the future (jose odd= hesiod)

says-- what are these books of which you speak?

Yes. The pocket sized definition of information is the collection of differences that make a difference. So much noise, and so much of the signal is encrypted.

Jose will have a mountain of facts, and all to little information, I suspect.

[rhiannon55]

2. Wow! Is there more? Are you writing a book?

I would read it :-)

[Fovea]

6. I am thinking about it.

I would like to start by including two white papers I wrote for my former employer about how we needed to be designing software for bi-directional energy customers/producers and to design a set of open standards for e-voting. My former employer was a giant in the software industry. My boss thought it too much effort for too little reward.

That was spring of 2000. Then in June of 2001, I had a stroke and two heart attacks on the same day. I know that the stroke has affected my brain, but the practical effect is like having awoken to a dystopia.

I wish I could be optimistic, but I don't believe Jose will be a citizen of the United States, indeed, no one will. I don't think America has 10 years left to civil war.

Imagine 2 more Katrinas... in the same year. Now imagine that it is also the first year that over 50% of oil is brokered in Euros. Oh yeah, and we are still in Iraq, fighting the Saudis- which is where the Bush family had to retire to in order to escape extradition. Jeruselem, Beirut, and Tehran are gone.. bang!

That is the world that Jose's grandfathers, our children are going to have to survive. Even without Bush and the neocons, we are heading into rough waters.

[Swede]

4. Good post.

Bush will be viewed rather badly,I agree.

[Aristus]

5. My fantasy history of the Dubya Misadministration begins with the lines:

"Beneficiary of a controversial Supreme Court decision {see Bush vs. Gore 2000}, George W. Bush went on to preside over the most disastrous administration in American history."

And it just gets better from there.

[Fovea]

7. And that is the rosey scenario.

after that it could easily say--

The oil crisis of 2007 followed by the world's oil markets shifting to the Euro lead to total destruction of the Republican party along with the American economy, in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to keep Vice President Cheney out of the Hague and Bush in office.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

8. Or it may say nothing until 500 years later

and be called the Second Dark Ages.

[Fovea]

9. Sigh. That is in the probability cloud as well.

Big Ass Sigh.