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June 29, 2012 17 Comments
Been brainstorming on this over email, and this is the initial list I came up with:
1/28/86 (Challenger disaster)
9/11/01
6/28/12
Ground rule – within your lifetime (this would be why I left out something like 11/22/63, etc.)
I trust the unifying property of the date list is clear from context, and from my prior expressed views below.
Anyone got any worthy additions to the list?
P.S. No, I am not joking or exaggerating.
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10/19/87
8/8/74
Seems like there ought to be something in 2007, but it’s hard to settle on a particular date.
Re Nixon, Glenn Greenwald argues that Ford’s pardon was a turning point in destroying the rule of law in the US. Dunno whether his resignation is a disaster per se, but it seemed momentous and bad. It happened on the first day I was ever in DC, on vacation with my parents, and thus sticks in my mind as a symbol of reified decline.
I wasn’t quite sure which ’74ish date most applied, so I punted on that one.
For whatever reason, dates relating to ‘bad market event’ don’t rise to the level in my head, but I understand.
Lehman’s collapse?
Doesn’t for me as I welcomed that one.
I’m gonna ask the stupid question. How does the Challenger fit?
My explanation for that is pretty long/tortuous/personal (just ask Pastorius) but it basically mirrors robert61′s final sentence about Nixon.
Personal circumstances definitely play into your perceptions, especially when you’re young. While we were listening to Nixon’s resignation speech on the car radio, my hothead dad got lost, got angry, grabbed the map (remember “maps”?) from my mother, thrust it into my 13 year old hands, pointed at an offramp and snarled, “This one?!” I had no idea, but confidently said, “Yes!”, figuring I could sort it out once I had a few seconds with the map. Luckily I was right. Way to bring home the national mood of uncertainty and looming disaster, though, pops! Our nation seemed to be laboring under the same kind of fine leadership as our stupid family car.
I have similarly vivid memories of Reagan’s Libya bombing and Clinton’s Lewinsky-era announcement that he was bombing (Sudan and Afghanistan?), which for some reason I also heard in the ‘family car’ at the time, but in those cases historical context allowed me to override my subjectivity so I left them off the list…
I think 9/11 is much more singular…everything else is part of a broader trend….those terrorist idiots flushed trillions down the toilet with their stupid stunt.
Most damaging, sure. Singular, not so sure. Part of this is obviously subjective but has to do with when those ‘broader trends’, even if obvious in hindsight, suddenly became no longer deniable.
10/3/2008 — the date democracy died (again).
I considered one along those lines but there was more than one I think…
Indeed. But to recall the era… The calls to congress were going ~100 to 1 against… I was talking to the devout leftists at work about it… and we were freaking agreeing: anytime Dubya and Pelosi and (whoever the hell was Senate Majority leader) agreed on something this big, you had know we were all screwed. And the house votes the damn thing down in Sept… and then the Senate takes it back pretends to do some surgery… and you just have to know the Dubya and Paulson were threatening Congressmen with death or worse… and they bring the same damn thing back and… presto: Oct 3, we all agree now. 700billion, 700 trillion, whatever…
And for 4 years now it is been the same.damn.thing. over.and.over: Extend and pretend. The left bitches about TBTF, the right bitches about TBTF, and yet never has TBTF been more indelibly inscribed on the heart of America. Just grasp the fucking nettle and pull it out! Are we not men? (Apparently not…)
I think you’ve convinced me.
March 8, 1971. Griggs v. Duke Power Co.
The symbolic date Smart People pulled up the ladders and told everyone else to be equal — or else.
How about Citizens United?
Might have qualified for the list if it had gone the other way.