Michael McGuire: It’s been a strange and peculiar decade. So weird we don’t even know what to call it
It’s been a strange and peculiar decade. So weird we don’t even know what to call it. It started with Obama and ended with Trump. How will we remember this decade?
Opinion
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What’s that around the corner? Oh, it’s 2020. So what’s happened during the past 10 years? Have we learnt anything? At all? It’s been a strange decade. Does it even have a name? We had the naughties before 2010. There were the 90s and the 80s before that. What do we call the span of time between 2010 and 2020? The lost years?
It’s been an odd decade. You can’t deny it. Politics became deeply weird. Australia had six prime ministers, including two with a solid claim to be numbered among the worst the country has produced in Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott.
The language changed. New words and phrases came along: Selfie, iPad, fake news, alternative facts, Brexit, deep fake, LOL, FOMO, alt-right, covfefe, mansplain, safe space, photobomb, Netflix, streaming. Fortnite. Old mate. Old words took on new meanings: Woke, snowflake, like, troll. Identity politics became a thing. Hipsters made a comeback.
Smartphones took over the world. The number of Australians with a smartphone jumped from below 50 per cent to 84 per cent in a decade. The number of people who look at a screen while walking down the street instead of where they are going is roughly the same.
The next stage of evolution will grant humanity two giant thumbs, eyes that can’t see more than 30cm and extrasensory perception to stop you bumping into lamp posts and fellow pedestrians. The only reason we are keen on developing self-driving cars is so we can spend more time on our phones. It was a decade that started with the left-wing dream of Barack Obama in charge at the White House and will end with the left-wing nightmare of Donald Trump ensconced in the Oval Office. Obama to Trump marks the biggest change in direction since Ebenezer Scrooge decided he liked Christmas after all.
You could mount an argument Obama ended up being a somewhat ineffectual leader whose rhetoric didn’t match his action. But his two terms as president are starting to look like a golden age of balance and reason. It’s probably unwise to make too many predictions about Trump, as he could still be around for another five years, but there is every chance his will go down as the most corrupt administration in US history. Quite a few of them are already in jail, more may follow.
Trump seems emblematic of both a dumbing down of politics and also its drift towards the extremities of Left and Right. What remained of the political centre crumbled as increasing numbers of people chose a political side like they would a football team and barracked just as irrationally.
The United Kingdom is inching towards its Brexit. No matter whether you agree with it or not the process has been handled with an ineptness that means it will be a long, long time before Britain recovers. If it ever does. Yet, amid the genuine uselessness of Conservative PMs such as Theresa May and Boris Johnson, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has still managed to look worse. Quite the feat.
The decade has seen a drift towards authoritarianism and an undermining of democracy. Trump has aligned himself closer to Russia’s Vladimir Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong–un, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed Bin Salman. Far Right parties have re-emerged in Europe, in part, as opposition to the cultural changes over recent decades to do with the demise of religion and the increasing tolerance for gender rights, multiculturalism and immigration.
Movements such as the Arab Spring at the start of the decade feel like a long time ago, especially when the carnage in Syria and Yemen keeps accelerating. The dangers associated with climate change are still largely ignored. The sense of pessimism about our leaders has worsened in 10 years. Maybe that’s why it’s also been the decade of the superhero movie. If we can’t find bravery and heroism in the real world, the comic-book universe will have to do.
At this stage it’s hard to be any more optimistic about the next decade. But at least it will have a name. Whether it’s the roaring twenties again or the lamentable twenties is the question.