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Warning: This article has nothing to do with games. Proceed
at your own risk.
2001: A New Kind of Year
By Tom Chick
2001 will not be remembered as 2001. It will be remembered as September
11th.
People remember where they were when Kennedy was shot, when the
Challenger exploded, when Nixon resigned. Maybe even when Princess
Di was killed under Paris. But those are minor league next to that
morning in September. Where were you? At work? Getting out of bed?
Did you see it as it happened? At first, did you think it was just
a small plane accident? Did you see the second one hit? Did you
cry? Who was the first person you called? Were you standing there
in the city, watching it actually happen? Did you know someone who
died? Did you know someone who lived?
This is what 2001 means. It is the impact of that day on you, your
family, your country, your world. A decade from now, no one will
talk about the attacks of 2001; they will still talk about the attacks
of September 11th. It was a day around which years will revolve
and 2001 falls into two parts around it.
The World Trade Center is a fitting metaphor for 2001. On one hand,
2001 was a year of big shiny hopeful things collapsing before our
eyes. But on the other hand, 2001 was people dealing with the despair
and confusion with a renewed sense of resolve. We've lost ideas
of peace, prosperity, and safety. The election process. The Israeli/Palestinian
peace talks. The Internet. The economy. The delivery of mail. What
new things will go in their places?
Consider the two submarine stories of 2001. The Navy's nuclear
submarine USS Greeneville was popping underwater wheelies to impress
a bunch of rich Texans when it smashed into the bottom of a Japanese
trawler taking students on a field trip. The other submarine story
was how an international group banded together and pulled Russia's
ruined Kursk out of the cold mud 350 feet under the Barents Sea,
a seemingly impossible task accomplished to honor the 118 dead and
to prevent it from happening again. On one hand, sudden disaster
and no one saw it coming. On the other hand, people coming together
and doing noble things.
Is this the new millennium? After all, those people were right
when they insisted that technically the millennium didn't begin
in 2000. Now we're in the 21st century, the third millennium, and
how quaint was it in those simpler times when we were scared of
the Y2K bug?
A new kind of war
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