The Iron Curtain had fallen; there was hope for Russia to become a democracy, and the weight of living in fear of dying in a nuclear war was lifted. China was becoming, perhaps not democratic, but at least economically liberal.
The economy was doing reasonably well for most people - it wasn't the high inflation of the eighties, and 2008 was not yet on the horizon. It wasn't yet the two-level economy that it became - if you were lower class, there was still a plausible route to the middle class.
AIDS was becoming manageable rather than a death sentence. Climate change wasn't really on people's radar as a real worry yet - there wasn't a sense of doom about it.
There was still hope that technology would free and empower us rather than enslave us.
And no, I wasn't a teenager or in my early twenties. Though I did have a pretty sweet life then...
For the international stuff, that's possible. Still... Russia wasn't an adversary yet, even in the early 00s. Neither was China. Nobody was building bomb shelters and doomsday retreat bunkers.
People were definitely building bomb shelters and doomsday retreat bunkers in the aughts, although they were signifiers of adherence to a particular political outlook.
There was definitely a sense that US hegemony would not be contested by a rival great power, but there was also widespread belief that that hegemony would be undermined and chipped away at by a million insurgent groups and terror cells. IIRC a rivalry with China was speculative and sometimes dismissed as fanciful within the foreseeable future, but we had literal terrorism response drills at my high school. We currently live in the craziest possible international arena, but it's not like the Bush years were some utopia by comparison.
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Perhaps so, but it was a really nice time.
The Iron Curtain had fallen; there was hope for Russia to become a democracy, and the weight of living in fear of dying in a nuclear war was lifted. China was becoming, perhaps not democratic, but at least economically liberal.
The economy was doing reasonably well for most people - it wasn't the high inflation of the eighties, and 2008 was not yet on the horizon. It wasn't yet the two-level economy that it became - if you were lower class, there was still a plausible route to the middle class.
AIDS was becoming manageable rather than a death sentence. Climate change wasn't really on people's radar as a real worry yet - there wasn't a sense of doom about it.
There was still hope that technology would free and empower us rather than enslave us.
And no, I wasn't a teenager or in my early twenties. Though I did have a pretty sweet life then...
seems like you are confusing early 00s with early 90s
For the international stuff, that's possible. Still... Russia wasn't an adversary yet, even in the early 00s. Neither was China. Nobody was building bomb shelters and doomsday retreat bunkers.
People were definitely building bomb shelters and doomsday retreat bunkers in the aughts, although they were signifiers of adherence to a particular political outlook.
There was definitely a sense that US hegemony would not be contested by a rival great power, but there was also widespread belief that that hegemony would be undermined and chipped away at by a million insurgent groups and terror cells. IIRC a rivalry with China was speculative and sometimes dismissed as fanciful within the foreseeable future, but we had literal terrorism response drills at my high school. We currently live in the craziest possible international arena, but it's not like the Bush years were some utopia by comparison.
the bunkers were due to "gub'mnt gonn get us" in the wake of ruby ridge and waco
weirdos and nutjobs running their cults. not hyper-rich, deepy engaged technical types.