With all the end-of-decade chit-chat floating turgidly through the holiday atmosphere, here's my own take, since I haven't seen anything close to it in the media so far. To wit: the first millenial decade (the aughts, I think) should be viewed as The Republican Decade. Their "achievements" were substantial. They held the White House for 8 years and the Congress for 6 (or was it four? Well, with the Dems as the opposition party, it hardly mattered). And the upshot of that decade is that it will likely take several years--or yet another decade--of Democratic leadership to undo the damage Republicans have inflicted.
What were the hallmarks of the Republican decade? Here's a fairly random summary list. It's by no means a "top ten". Please feel free to offer your own favorites!
- Republicans began the decade by foisting off a hare-brained, alcoholic, nepotistic nonentity onto the American public as their nominee, then proceeded to install him as president despite the fact that his opponent got substantially more votes.
- Their nonentity president (supposedly a "quick study"--a phrase we're going to hear again from them in 2012) ignored a series of warnings about an attack on US soil, warnings that would have prompted an average adult American (had we been lucky enough to have an average American in office) to attempt to thwart it.
- Once the attack occurred due to their man's negligence, Republicans seized the opportunity to divide a stunned but united nation by promoting an obviously unnecessary, expensive, and pointless war against a country that had had nothing to do with the attacks and posed no threat to us.
- In the face of their expensive and purposeless war, Republicans passed a tax cut top-heavy with benefits for the wealthiest Americans, furthering their policies of distributing ever more of the nation's wealth to the wealthiest, and of bankrupting the federal government to rob from it the resources to do anybody any good.
- They placed other Republicans into positions of power in regulatory agencies throughout the government to prevent those agencies from carrying out their functions. As a result, numerous citizens, pension funds, state and local governments, universities, charities, and other institutions were robbed blind by "investment banks," "brokerage houses," banks, and other entities allowed and encouraged by Republicans to engage in deception, usury, fraud, and other forms of theft.
- Because their purposeless war in Iraq robbed resources from the important effort to kill and capture the actual criminals who murdered thousands of people on Sept. 11, Republicans, either negligently or intentionally, allowed the murderers and their supporters to escape imminent capture or destruction.
- Meanwhile, Republicans squandered a level of international support and goodwill toward the US unknown since the Pax Americana at the end of WWII. They did this so effectively that the US president was less popular abroad than the fanatical murderer who plotted the 9/11 bombings.
- As the Republican decade closed, Republican incompetence, tolerance of white collar criminality, and squandering of treasury funds kicked off an international recession that threatened to create financial chaos worldwide. Their reaction to this was either to do nothing or to hand over as much of the taxpayers' money as possible, no questions asked, to the individuals and institutions most responsible for the financial collapse.
- In the realm of science and education, Republicans promoted policies championed by near-psychotic religious fanatics. They refused to allow the most basic research necessary to speed the development of successful cures for numerous diseases, and promoted the teaching of religion in place of science in our nation's public schools.
- A major feature of the Republican Decade was repeated exposures of their most "promising" political luminaries as perverts, grifters, molesters, sex addicts, liars, cheats, and thieves. The level of hypocrisy reached by these stalwarts, and those who were "shocked!" by the repEtitious revelations was breathtaking, even in a realm as seamy as American politics.
Like I said--it's by no means exhaustive--just a random 10 off the top of my head. Please add your own. And let's not let ANYONE forget that this has been THE REPUBLICAN DECADE!