The End of the 00s: The Counterfactual 00s, by Rudolph Delson

by The End of the 00s

Something exceptional has come to an end.

This unnameable decade, this double-zero decade, this all-for-naught decade: I don’t think we will wear anything like it again.

It has to do with George Bush, and it has to do Al Gore, and I am going to rely on the image of a zipper.

As long as the Future is still the Future, it has its quiet alternatives, its right side and its left side, its either and its or. (And that is the appeal of the Future: its indeterminacy.) The Present tugs the sides together, its meshes their teeth, it fixes them into one. (And that is the appeal of the Present: its noise.) What is left behind is the Past, a tight and quiet seam, something that cannot be pulled apart anymore. (And that is the appeal of the Past: its determinacy.) Every ten years, we zip up one coat’s worth of Time, and we hang it on a rack in our memory. This coat is the ’70s; consider its fabric and its cut. This coat is the ’80s; look at its padding and its patterning. We accumulate six or nine such coats, and then we die.

So, this newest old coat, the ‘00s? It is exceptional because its zipper is broken. Oh, we can zip it up, but the teeth will not stay meshed. The left flap and right flap keep yawning apart-from about November of 2000 until about January of 2009, the two sides yawn apart-and they will always yawn apart. The right flap will always be the actual ’00s, when George Bush was President; and the left flap will always be the counterfactual ’00s, when he was not.

Let me trace the left side of the past.

Let me trace the counterfactual ‘00s.

What if we had permitted the fellow who actually won the election in 2000 to assume the presidency in 2001?

Here, in the counterfactual ’00s, is the moment during Al Gore’s first year as President when fanatics hijacked commercial jetliners and flew them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan, killing innocent thousands. And here is the moment, during his second year in office, when the Republicans blamed those attacks on the President.

Of course there was no such moment in the actual ’00s. In the actual ’00s, there was a national verdict: the Democrats and Republicans were jointly and severally liable for September 11. (And when, in a two-party system, two parties are jointly and severally liable, neither party pays the judgment.) The Democrats were liable for September 11 because they were the architects of the domestic security apparatus that failed to detect and thwart the plot; but the Democrats were not liable because they were not in office the day it happened. The Republicans were liable for September 11th because they were in office the day it happened; but the Republicans were not liable because they were not yet the architects of our domestic security apparatus. That was in the actual ‘00s.

In the counterfactual ’00s, there would have been no national sharing-of-the-blame. In the counterfactual ’00s, there would have been no Republican cant about how “No one could have foreseen September 11th,” there would have been no Republican demands for deference to presidential prerogatives in times of war, no Republican sympathy at all for a leader attempting to master an unprecedented crisis.

Al Gore would have given a wise speech on September 20th, calling perhaps for limited war and perhaps for limited energy use-and none of his proposals would have been passed Congress-and eventually the Republican Party, with an orgy of sanctimony, with a sermon of fire, would have put an end to Al Gore. The Republicans would have said the failures of September 11 were specifically “Democrat failures.” The Republicans would have pointed out that only one party could possible be to blame for not having foreseen the foreseeable. The Republicans would have increased their majority in both halves of Congress in November 2002, and in the spring of 2003 they would have begun hearings to impeach Al Gore, and horrible Joe Lieberman would have spent every morning in the vice-presidential residence praying-and for God only knows what. John McCain would have won the presidency in 2004 and 2008. And in December of counterfactual 2009, everyone would be talking about the presidential ambitions of Vice President Jeb Bush.

And so the fabric of the years holds together.

And so the coat always fits on its hanger.

Even if we can imagine how time might have run differently, even if we can trace the counterfactual ’00s with our finger, we cannot un-imagine the ideologues and ignoramuses with whom we share our elections, we cannot un-imagine their egomania and their might. We can see the other side of the zipper; we cannot un-see the color of the coat. No matter how you squint at it, America stays hideous.

Rudolph Delson is the Awl’s correspondent for Vice-Presidential issues.