It feels like a high-tech 2000s. You have the same vibe going on as you did when 9/11 happened. And you hear pop punk on the mainstream radio. Many people seem to be naming this the decade from hell like they did in the 2000s. You also feel early 2000s nostalgia in the air. Only downside is the pop culture is nowhere near as good as it was in the 2000s.

Yeah the pop culture is horrible now! It was still good in the early 2000’s. I don’t feel like it was the decade from hell but it makes since to compare the two.

It feels like a high-tech 2000s. You have the same vibe going on as you did when 9/11 happened. And you hear pop punk on the mainstream radio. Many people seem to be naming this the decade from hell like they did in the 2000s. You also feel early 2000s nostalgia in the air. Only downside is the pop culture is nowhere near as good as it was in the 2000s.


Sorry, I must dispute. In no way is this "the same vibe going on as you did when 9/11 happened". Not even close.  After 9-11 there was utter shock that Americans were attacked on their own soil, although in 20/20 hindsight it was obvious. Then there was a "coming together" of sorts, a feeling of unity, brief though it was. People felt patriotic. Policies and procedures were put into effect to see that such an act of terrorism didn't happen again. Some effective, some not, some nothing but security theater. Then the shock we felt basically dissipated and people went back to "normal", but forever with the memory.

There was none of the political divisiveness of today's issues surrounding 9-11. A tenured professor at U of Colorado named Ward Churchill, whom, like Elizbeth Warren, pretended to be Native American, made a statement that the 3000 people who were killed deserved it because they were "Little Eichmanns", technocrats working for the war department. Very few people agreed with him and many people were horrified at his crass remarks masquerading as political dissent. Today, extremists comments like this from all sides of today's issues are far more commonplace.

We wouldn't have dreamed back then that something as basic to the human condition as a virus would be so politicized, rather than "if you do this you are likely to get it, if you do that you stand a chance of preventing it". Should be simple.  No, it's a very, very different period than 9-11. No comparison at all.

It feels like a high-tech 2000s. You have the same vibe going on as you did when 9/11 happened. And you hear pop punk on the mainstream radio. Many people seem to be naming this the decade from hell like they did in the 2000s. You also feel early 2000s nostalgia in the air. Only downside is the pop culture is nowhere near as good as it was in the 2000s.


The only people who really called the 2000s as the decade of hell was Time magazine. Even back then, people ridiculed them for calling it as that since there were far worse decades.

It feels like a high-tech 2000s. You have the same vibe going on as you did when 9/11 happened. And you hear pop punk on the mainstream radio. Many people seem to be naming this the decade from hell like they did in the 2000s. You also feel early 2000s nostalgia in the air. Only downside is the pop culture is nowhere near as good as it was in the 2000s.
Except for the coronavirus and maybe various political protests, I don't think so. The technology is more advanced but also far more insidious in various respects than back in the 2000s (because of DRM, the dominance of streaming and other technological measures to ensure only companies keep culture, and only for profit). Independent online spaces are much less of a thing than it likely was in the 2000s. Reddit, YouTube and Facebook were in their infancy while Twitter and Instagram wouldn't really exist until the 2010s. The corporate-owned online spaces of the time didn't seem as impactful then as it is now.

I'm not hearing pop punk on the radio (then again I've made a point to avoid the radio ever since the 2010s). Pop punk will likely be recycled as opposed to being genuinely inspired by the current time unlike in the 2000s. Plus it'll be affected by DRM. Pop punk I think came from a time when machismo dominated the cultural landscape and pop punk I think existed in part as a backlash to this (rock music was still viewed as cool too, being a rockstar these days is no longer aspirational); it vaguely had a cutesy aesthetic to me at some points that I think the 2010s lacked. This was also the decade that "metrosexual" was used and debates about same sex marriage started to take place (the 2010s had more LGBT+ visibility I think by comparison; I'm not sure about the impact the LGBT+ community had on pop culture in the 2000s and 2010s but LGBT+ culture according to what the mainstream knows about it tends to not be my taste). Politically this summarizes the LGBT+ community in the 2010s. There was less questioning of religious and national institutions in the 2000s so I think being LGBT+ felt more underground. In the 2020s it's much less underground (recent UK census even asks about gender and sexuality).

The 2020s tends to only draw from the first three or so years of the 2000s, and the ways that people (at least in economically developed countries) see the world now even down to everyday life is completely different. Our jokes and ways of having fun and fooling around have been impacted heavily from the 2010s (whether they're politically correct or not, I think this is something for a different topic), and this isn't just down to increased smartphone and tech usage, but as a result of the pop culture - it's almost worlds beyond what the 2000s considered funny, cool and interesting. The 2010s had an obsession with being classy or quirky to the point it can seem disingenuous; I can tolerate quirkiness as long as it's not used for domineering purposes like companies trying to be cool with its clients but doing nothing for them and otherwise being part of the problem.

I think people wanted to forget the 2000s' outlook, aesthetic tastes and political stuff enough to the point it's now misrepresented as people are starting to embrace it again.

The only good thing I think that didn't exist in the 2000s that slightly exists more now is more inclusivity, or a concerted effort to be committed to that.

Sorry, I must dispute. In no way is this "the same vibe going on as you did when 9/11 happened". Not even close.  After 9-11 there was utter shock that Americans were attacked on their own soil, although in 20/20 hindsight it was obvious. Then there was a "coming together" of sorts, a feeling of unity, brief though it was. People felt patriotic. Policies and procedures were put into effect to see that such an act of terrorism didn't happen again. Some effective, some not, some nothing but security theater. Then the shock we felt basically dissipated and people went back to "normal", but forever with the memory.

There was none of the political divisiveness of today's issues surrounding 9-11. A tenured professor at U of Colorado named Ward Churchill, whom, like Elizbeth Warren, pretended to be Native American, made a statement that the 3000 people who were killed deserved it because they were "Little Eichmanns", technocrats working for the war department. Very few people agreed with him and many people were horrified at his crass remarks masquerading as political dissent. Today, extremists comments like this from all sides of today's issues are far more commonplace.

We wouldn't have dreamed back then that something as basic to the human condition as a virus would be so politicized, rather than "if you do this you are likely to get it, if you do that you stand a chance of preventing it". Should be simple.  No, it's a very, very different period than 9-11. No comparison at all.
Politically there was much less division because many didn't really dare to question the US and the current norms. I don't know if it was because of the wars, the less advanced internet, the PATRIOT act or whatever else.

Bear in mind too this was the decade when people were fine with the qualms surrounding same sex marriage, a politically contentious issue then for the economically developed world (I think Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and David Cameron also expressed qualms about same sex marriage during this decade, and unlike now, Trump was open to same sex marriage) - I've even seen a video from 2007 where a gay couple was OK with them being given only civil partnerships, whereas in the (early and mid) 2010s people would try and pick and tear apart certain Bible passages to try and disprove the status quo; I don't know about the 2020s but at least people of my generation are planning to do away with marriage altogether if they have antipathy towards it, not out of concern in support of religious institutions but in a larger concerted effort to crush misogynistic and predatory capitalist practices, no Bible study needed.

Growing apathy and sometimes antipathy with religious institutions (for reasons that apply to wider society I'm still unclear about), high profile cases of racist abuse from the 2010s and possibly feeling a sense of safety in airing out criticisms of foreign policy as a result of time and perhaps specific political events (or skepticism of the narrative that foreigners are bad), in addition to the recession maybe shaped the 2010s politically to how it has been ever since.

Edit: I found this: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/2010s-spelled-end-white-christian-america-ncna1106936

But I can't help that it leaves out how immigration in the 2000s took place (as someone who immigrated to the UK in the 2000s), because if white Christian America started to decline in the 2010s, then the 2000s would have had something to do with it. The very least I can certainly say is revolved around US foreign policy.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/2010s-spelled-end-white-christian-america-ncna1106936

The reasons for these departures from white Christian churches are complex, but many are rooted in the way that culture war politics played out over the last few decades of the 20th century. As white Christian millennials were coming of age, the rise of the Christian Right meant that the public faces of Christianity, and even religion overall, were a cadre of white male religious leaders who were almost exclusively supporting conservative Republican political candidates and who had opposing LGBTQ rights at the top of their agenda.
Once again no mention of the 2000s has been made with regards to the change of culture. I still can't reliably prove the extent of religious influence the 2000s had compared to now.

I wish it would be more like the 2000's. I miss the old MySpace. The 2000's only felt like the decade from hell until the 2010's, and then the 2020's happened. Looking back, the 2000's feel more like the 1980's by comparison.

Sorry, I must dispute. In no way is this "the same vibe going on as you did when 9/11 happened". Not even close.  After 9-11 there was utter shock that Americans were attacked on their own soil, although in 20/20 hindsight it was obvious. Then there was a "coming together" of sorts, a feeling of unity, brief though it was. People felt patriotic. Policies and procedures were put into effect to see that such an act of terrorism didn't happen again. Some effective, some not, some nothing but security theater. Then the shock we felt basically dissipated and people went back to "normal", but forever with the memory.

There was none of the political divisiveness of today's issues surrounding 9-11. A tenured professor at U of Colorado named Ward Churchill, whom, like Elizbeth Warren, pretended to be Native American, made a statement that the 3000 people who were killed deserved it because they were "Little Eichmanns", technocrats working for the war department. Very few people agreed with him and many people were horrified at his crass remarks masquerading as political dissent. Today, extremists comments like this from all sides of today's issues are far more commonplace.

We wouldn't have dreamed back then that something as basic to the human condition as a virus would be so politicized, rather than "if you do this you are likely to get it, if you do that you stand a chance of preventing it". Should be simple.  No, it's a very, very different period than 9-11. No comparison at all.


Well... except there was that very politically divisive event where the Bush administration took advantage of the swelling patriotism after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and conducted war on a country that had little to nothing to do with 9/11. The Iraq war was so divisive that GWB might still be the most divisive president ever since approval rating polls began. So many US soldiers and Iraqis dead. And for what? The warmongers told America that Iraq would be a peaceful democracy in just a couple of years of US intervention. Look at us now. Not even conservatives want us there anymore.

But sure...liberals saying stupid crap is just the absolute worst.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/2010s-spelled-end-white-christian-america-ncna1106936
Once again no mention of the 2000s has been made with regards to the change of culture. I still can't reliably prove the extent of religious influence the 2000s had compared to now.


Irreligion took off in a big way in the late 1990s thanks to the Internet.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D22ERetUkAAfghw?format=png&name=900x900

Well... except there was that very politically divisive event where the Bush administration took advantage of the swelling patriotism after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and conducted war on a country that had little to nothing to do with 9/11. The Iraq war was so divisive that GWB might still be the most division president ever since approval rating polls began. So many US soldiers and Iraqis dead. And for what? The warmongers told America that Iraq would be a peaceful democracy in just a couple of years of US intervention. Look at us now. Not even conservatives want us there anymore.

But sure...liberals saying stupid crap is just the absolute worse.


Yes I figured it was just finishing up where dad left off. He needed a reason, even if it wasn’t accurate. Iraq didn’t even attack us.

Be very careful when you nurse a country until they are the same as us. Better hope you stay friends. Careful what you wish for.

Irreligion took off in a big way in the late 1990s thanks to the Internet.




From the new issue of The Atlantic:

How Politics Replaced Religion in America

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/04/america-politics-religion/618072/

Here are some excerpts. But better to click the link and read the whole article:

As Christianity’s hold, in particular, has weakened, ideological intensity and fragmentation have risen. American faith, it turns out, is as fervent as ever; it’s just that what was once religious belief has now been channeled into political belief. Political debates over what America is supposed to mean have taken on the character of theological disputations. This is what religion without religion looks like.



America itself is “almost a religion,” as the Catholic philosopher Michael Novak once put it, particularly for immigrants who come to their new identity with the zeal of the converted. The American civic religion has its own founding myth, its prophets and processions, as well as its scripture—the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and The Federalist Papers. In his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, Martin Luther King Jr. wished that “one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed.” The very idea that a nation might have a creed—a word associated primarily with religion—illustrates the uniqueness of American identity as well as its predicament.


No longer explicitly rooted in white, Protestant dominance, understandings of the American creed have become richer and more diverse—but also more fractious. As the creed fragments, each side seeks to exert exclusivist claims over the other. Conservatives believe that they are faithful to the American idea and that liberals are betraying it—but liberals believe, with equal certitude, that they are faithful to the American idea and that conservatives are betraying it. Without the common ground produced by a shared external enemy, as America had during the Cold War and briefly after the September 11 attacks, mutual antipathy grows, and each side becomes less intelligible to the other. Too often, the most bitter divides are those within families.


No wonder the newly ascendant American ideologies, having to fill the vacuum where religion once was, are so divisive. They are meant to be divisive. On the left, the “woke” take religious notions such as original sin, atonement, ritual, and excommunication and repurpose them for secular ends. Adherents of wokeism see themselves as challenging the long-dominant narrative that emphasized the exceptionalism of the nation’s founding. Whereas religion sees the promised land as being above, in God’s kingdom, the utopian left sees it as being ahead, in the realization of a just society here on Earth. After Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in September, droves of mourners gathered outside the Supreme Court—some kneeling, some holding candles—as though they were at the Western Wall.

Well... except there was that very politically divisive event where the Bush administration took advantage of the swelling patriotism after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and conducted war on a country that had little to nothing to do with 9/11. The Iraq war was so divisive that GWB might still be the most divisive president ever since approval rating polls began. So many US soldiers and Iraqis dead. And for what? The warmongers told America that Iraq would be a peaceful democracy in just a couple of years of US intervention. Look at us now. Not even conservatives want us there anymore.

But sure...liberals saying stupid crap is just the absolute worst.


Inb4 someone says anything about Trump inciting a riot that happened on January 6 of this year and inspiring many white supremacists to do hate crimes across the country. All while having them create a threat of domestic terrorism in America. Along with his irresponsibility during this pandemic, while he was president, caused many Americans to die from the virus. Not to mention his tens of thousands of lies that made the country very divisive. Which was way more than what GWB and even his father ever said when they were in office.

But sure, it's worse than when GWB or what any liberal or establishment Republican says because "they're just the absolute worst" and they don't comply to your beliefs.

From the new issue of The Atlantic:

How Politics Replaced Religion in America

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/04/america-politics-religion/618072/

Here are some excerpts. But better to click the link and read the whole article:

As Christianity’s hold, in particular, has weakened, ideological intensity and fragmentation have risen. American faith, it turns out, is as fervent as ever; it’s just that what was once religious belief has now been channeled into political belief. Political debates over what America is supposed to mean have taken on the character of theological disputations. This is what religion without religion looks like.



America itself is “almost a religion,” as the Catholic philosopher Michael Novak once put it, particularly for immigrants who come to their new identity with the zeal of the converted. The American civic religion has its own founding myth, its prophets and processions, as well as its scripture—the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and The Federalist Papers. In his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, Martin Luther King Jr. wished that “one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed.” The very idea that a nation might have a creed—a word associated primarily with religion—illustrates the uniqueness of American identity as well as its predicament.


No longer explicitly rooted in white, Protestant dominance, understandings of the American creed have become richer and more diverse—but also more fractious. As the creed fragments, each side seeks to exert exclusivist claims over the other. Conservatives believe that they are faithful to the American idea and that liberals are betraying it—but liberals believe, with equal certitude, that they are faithful to the American idea and that conservatives are betraying it. Without the common ground produced by a shared external enemy, as America had during the Cold War and briefly after the September 11 attacks, mutual antipathy grows, and each side becomes less intelligible to the other. Too often, the most bitter divides are those within families.


No wonder the newly ascendant American ideologies, having to fill the vacuum where religion once was, are so divisive. They are meant to be divisive. On the left, the “woke” take religious notions such as original sin, atonement, ritual, and excommunication and repurpose them for secular ends. Adherents of wokeism see themselves as challenging the long-dominant narrative that emphasized the exceptionalism of the nation’s founding. Whereas religion sees the promised land as being above, in God’s kingdom, the utopian left sees it as being ahead, in the realization of a just society here on Earth. After Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in September, droves of mourners gathered outside the Supreme Court—some kneeling, some holding candles—as though they were at the Western Wall.


I will try to read the entire thing before bed but I think divisiveness has always been a part of American politics. The country had a civil war not that long ago (on a historic scale). Polarization ebbs and flows.

I will try to read the entire thing before bed but I think divisiveness has always been a part of American politics. The country had a civil war not that long ago (on a historic scale). Polarization ebbs and flows.


Yeah, but he point of the article is that we used to have religion, and now we don't have it as much, so politics has become the religion, hence the way people were kneeling outside the Capitol when Ruth Bader Ginsberg died, like it was a religious institution or shrine. I thought that was a little odd when it happened.

Yeah, but he point of the article is that we used to have religion, and now we don't have it as much, so politics has become the religion, hence the way people were kneeling outside the Capitol when Ruth Bader Ginsberg died, like it was a religious institution or shrine. I thought that was a little odd when it happened.


I understood that to be the premise of the article, but my point is that American politics always had strong divisions and fault-lines even when Christianity was strong, so I don't think politics has taken the place of religion. The politics was always there.

Edit: I read the whole thing last night and my reply is the same. I thought his explanation for why Europe hasn't had an insurrection despite it being less religious was very hand-wavy . The truth is less religion is correlated with more stability, more democracy, less corruption. The US is a very religious country by democratic standards.

Seems like world events, controversies and politics will be similar to that of the chaotic 2000s but pop culture will be similar to the 2010s.