Sometimes I forget it in the daily grind, but now that I've had some time to think about Bush's Monday speech, I'm reminded of a realization I came to immediately following September 11. I've come of age in the most pivotal era in at least 50 years, if not in human history. Not since World War II has the future of the world been so unclear.

I was a child of the 80's, and an adolescent of the 90's. I was 7 when Reagan attacked Libya. I was 11 when the Berlin wall came and bodies burned in Tiananmen Square. I was 13 when the first gulf war ended. Being an unusually curious kid, I paid close attention to these events when they were broadcast live on the TV. I saw a world changing around me, something none of the futurists, social scientists, pundits, and writers I'd been exposed to had foreseen. The Soviet Empire was dead, and a new world was coming.

After these initial events, though, the New World Order seemed to fizzle out and die. The 90's were a non-decade when it came to international affairs, at least it seemed to us. Domestic affairs ruled the day. George I lied about taxes. Bill played the sax on Arsenio. Hilary tried to nationalize Health care. Rush Limbaugh became a cultural icon, for no good reasons I could discern. The culture wars raged, and the Republicans ended the decade in control of congress. By the dawn of the new millenium, my hometown of Seattle was turned into a battlefield by the luddite anti-globalization movement.

The economic boomtimes of the 90s had treated America well. A new Isolationism seemed an increasingly appealing idea to a nation that wanted to steer clear of foreign entanglements like the Balkans, which seemed to be the only areas of conflict in an increasingly peaceful world. The little wars fought by little people in little countries didn't affect us. History was pretty much over, and America seemed content enough to stagnate. Things were looking grim.

However, there were no external threats to the United States' continued existence. All the problems of the cold war had seemed to vanish in thin air. Instead, a new 60s style radicalism seemed to be bubbling beneath the surface, ready to tear the nation down. Universities, where the best and brightest of a nation were supposed to be prepared for life, had become cauldrons of dogmatic national self-hatred. Little did we know that worries about these "threats" were insignificant and silly compared to what really lurked out in the dark.

I think my generation was hardest hit psychologically from the 9-11 attacks. We young twenty-somethings and below are the post-post-modern generation. The hippies had rebelled against everything. Generation X had rebelled against them. Us, we grew up in a bizarre culture of anti-corporate MTV. Our rebellion was packaged and marketed back at us. I knew honor student cheerleader who had more tattoos than your worst merchant marines, and could hold their liquor better. Teenage moms were so 80's to us. The collapse of western civilization had become passe by '95.

We believed in fuck all, but after 9-11 we were suddenly under attack from somebody who hated us even more than we hated ourselves. Things suddenly mattered. We were at war. There wasn't supposed to be any more wars. Our pacifist vegan ex-hippie teachers had told us so. I'm one of the few people my age who remember the cold war, who remembers what it was like to go to bed and wonder if the missiles would fly while I was sleeping, killing me and everyone I cared about. I knew horrible things like the WTC attacks could happen, but I don't think most young people my age did.

When the madness of September 11 arrived, everyone suddenly realized the world wasn't the happy place they thought it was. America had been attacked in a catastrophic manner, and despite everything we were told to expect from our education system, we had done nothing to provoke it. Flags flew in a manner that hadn't been seen in at least 30 years. Patriotism suddenly moved from the least hip thing possible, to being tolerated in almost all places. The world was a dangerous place, and foreign affairs mattered. There was a war on, and even most whacked-out Naderites realized this was a fight against vile, intolerant, religious extremists intent on killing us all.

Great forces are now at work, and future history is being decided. The political map of the Middle East will be permanently redrawn within the next two years. Every time Bush gives a major policy speech, history is being made. Dubya's no Churchill in the speech department, but what the president says in these strange times is important. The next time you think about the war, think about the big picture. What is the world really going to look like in 5 years? In 10?

I've got a kid sister who's 16. The Soviet Union is an obscure historical side note to her. By the time she finishes college, the world will be drastically altered. I've also got a 2 year old niece. To her, the current war is going to be ancient history. She'll live in a world I can't predict, with all kinds of new threats and opportunities. I guess that's what makes life interesting.