Not great, but not 'from hell,' either

In general, very bad things happen when members of the media try to play historians. This week, Newsweek and Time magazines offer competing images of bleakness. The former enlists current Harvard (and former Stern School of Business) professor and respected financial historian Niall Ferguson to explain, as the magazine's cover puts it, how "steep debt, slow growth and high spending kill empires — and America could be next."

By contrast, Time magazine opts for a less subtle approach, calling the 2000s "The Decade from Hell." The author, Andy Serwer, managing editor of Fortune magazine, elaborates on that description: "This decade was as awful as any peacetime decade in the nation's entire history," he writes.

Now, let's step back from this a bit. First and foremost, just what exactly is a "peacetime decade"? Sure, we can reasonably eliminate, say, the 1860s and the 1940s from the analysis, but that still leaves a sizable gray area. Do we eliminate the 1950s (Korea)? The 1960s and 1970s (Vietnam)? The 1890s (Spanish-American War)? While we're at it, what do we do about the constant warring between whites and American Indians, which began in the 17th century and continued all the way into the 20th? Against that backdrop, the phrase "worst peacetime decade" is a fatuous one.

Serwer's case seems obvious. He cites a litany of bad news: foreign and domestic terrorist attacks, economic decline, a decaying physical infrastructure (see levees, New Orleans), two foreign wars that have been either woefully mismanaged or seen criminal violations of international conventions (depending on your point of view), etc.

Now, I'll be willing to go so far as to admit that this has probably been the worst decade of my lifetime. Of course, I've only been around for all or part of three. I don't remember anything of the 1980s, and the closest thing to national crises in the 1990s was, as best I can remember, the end of "Seinfeld" and that one time when the president got freaky with a cigar and inspired a million kinky boss/secretary fantasies.

But the worst peacetime decade in all American history? Really?

Worse than the 1930s? The decade of the Depression so great they measured all other downturns against it? The decade of widespread labor unrest, bread lines and mass migration to California in the hope of finding jobs picking fruit for 25 cents a day? Not to mention the creeping threat of global fascism.

Worse than the 1960s and 1970s? Two decades of widespread domestic terrorism culminating in the assassinations of two Kennedys and a King (ask your parents about the Weathermen, the Black Panthers and Patty Hearst)? Two decades of a war so divisive it makes the Iraq/Afghanistan brouhaha look like two fat kids fighting for the last cupcake? Two decades that closed with job losses, inflation, lines at gas pumps and hostages in Iran?

Even the glorious 1990s had the first World Trade Center bombing, the Waco Siege, the Rwandan Genocide, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Atlanta Olympics bombing, the Columbine High School massacre, ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, and of course, an American president's impeachment for perjury and obstruction of justice.

Yes, it's been a rough decade. If you had told the masses in Times Square on New Year's Eve 1999 everything that would happen between then and now, they'd be stunned and frightened. But that's the beauty of it. The future is unwritten, as the late, great Joe Strummer used to say. No one truly knows what's ahead. But if you want to wait for a decade of total peace and prosperity, you'll be waiting quite a while.

If this has been the decade from hell, then the decade from heaven will be truly divine.

Samuel Chamberlain is opinion editor.