Word: make
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...just so you know that human nature has not entirely altered as of this writing: what America once feared as the Soviet Union, we now fear as the Russian non-union--seething duchies with warheads underground. China, with its split personality, continues to make us nervous; we court its markets while trying to improve its government. In the Balkans, Christians spent the better part of the past nine years massacring Muslims. In Sudan, Muslims continue to massacre Christians. Over the past 100 years, we have advanced from Sarajevo to Sarajevo. If Sarajevo is again involved...
...more mysterious problems are, as usual, internal. Mergers aside, we are in an increasing mode of separation from one another. The American class system (always vehemently denied) has never been more stratified. People who make the same money live in the same neighborhoods; they socialize with the same people; their kids go to the same schools; their habits, speech patterns, clothes are the same. The so-called middle class consists of a dozen subclasses earning anywhere from $20,000 a year to $200,000. Distribution is skewed. The top 20% of American families make as much as the remaining...
Between people and themselves, separations have always existed. Some of that today is due to the "Is this all there is"-ness of flush modern life; some, to the number of work hours--a mere three hours less a week than in 1970. And the pressures of competition make those hours feel like more. Maybe we are deliberately working harder so as to have less contact, less time for self-inspection. (These are self-interested but not introspective times.) I won't pretend to know what all this means, but if you have preserved Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times...
...wonder how far you have progressed. I wonder if you have learned to deal with the concept of God without turning faith into a weapon. I wonder if you have learned to control the anarchy of popular authority. I wonder if you have figured out how to make the best use of the past. Have you learned that traditions and institutions are not all bad? After a century of Freud, Marx and Einstein, we are pretty shatterproof these days, in terms of not being shocked by being all shook up. But in the words of one of our favorite songwriters...
Almost as interested in world rollovers as the bunkered down were the U.S. and Russian military officers at Peterson Air Force Base, the now permanent Center for Year 2000 Strategic Stability. Officers from both sides of the cold peace, who were there to make sure no nukes accidentally went off, labored to keep busy, channel surfing among CNN and other news shows and showing one another Russian Internet fare. The only old-school touch was the hot-line phones, black for Moscow, white for the U.S. When the clocks changed in Moscow and no bugs were reported, the Russian team...