Does anyone here exactly remembers the lead up to the Iraq war? Like with the media and the politicians during 2002-2003?
2002 was a really weird year, yes it was the post 9/11 era, yes you saw a lot of patriotism and yes you have a few things like the anthrax scare or the DC sniper, but there was a strong desire for a return to normalcy, 2002 was generally a pretty chill year that still had a lot of the feel of the 90s, 9/11 didn't completely dominate American life, it was the opposite of modern Covid hysteria, most people just wanted to live like things were normal, now granted I was young and that was my perception, but I feel like I'm correct, people saw it as part of their duty to not give in to panic and to keep living their lives normally.
But when it did come to the Iraq war, most right leaning Americans were all for it, we were pissed off and wanted to kick some ass, it didn't even really matter whose ass we kick.
Of course bleeding heart liberals as they were called back then were against it from the moment it was announced, but the general perception was that we were going to absolutely steamroll like we did during the Gulf War and it'd be over with no time, it was only as things like sectarian violence spread and it just kept dragging on did most everyone start to sour on it, which I would say by 2006 most everyone knew it had become a clusterfuck and by 2007/2008 nobody but the most diehards could look at Dubya and not cringe.
But even life from 2002-2007 still felt like an "extended 90s" in a lot of ways, this is what would be hard for future generations to understand, again I compare it to modern things like Covid where it absolutely dominated everyone's day to day lives or Trump where people would obsess over him and talk about him constantly, so people probably assume it was the same then, but Dubya, the Iraq war, the post 9/11 era, all that shit was effectively "in the background" for most Americans, you could tune into it if you wanted and some people really did a lot, but all you had to do was turn off the TV news and could then effectively forget about it, out of sight, out of mind, life was mostly business as usual for most Americans, it wasn't like today's world where you're bombarded with politics constantly thanks to things like social media.
Not that you didn't sometimes feel some existential dread back then, wondering how things were going to play out and where it might be going, you had movies like V For Vendetta or Children of Men reflect these fears, you also had phenomena like Loose Change in 2006 that had everyone discussing whether 9/11 was an inside job, I'm not saying people never thought about these things, it just didn't completely DOMINATE life like things do today.
But really, we all kinda knew deep down inside things were going to get worse, as the aforementioned movies illustrated, we just didn't know the exact details.
I would say that narcissism is the pathology of our time. It's gradually gotten more pervasive post-WW2 and something that corporations and the media have openly fed and enrouaged. And I don't mean that people have gotten more selfish, narcissism is actually just a lack of a sense of self that causes people to reach out for chosen identities. The end consequence of this (as the Adam Curtis documentary points out) is the erosion of relationships and meaningful social bonds. Previously, people just had their identities handed to them by society, and they gained a sense of self-worth by how much they helped other people. Identities are now being commodified, defined by marketing, and sold
The narcissism is what fuels peoples' denial of reality in favor of what they WANT to be the truth though, it's two sides of the same coin
I think it goes without saying that anyone who were practically children during a particular decade would probably have a rose tinted view of said decade because we wouldn't have been aware of the harsh realities of the world. As someone would was certainly a child of the 2000s, I bared no mind to 9/11, the Iraq War, the Great Recession, or any of that sad stuff. All I cared about was the teeny-bopper stuff that was on Disney Channel, Roblox, YouTube (obviously back when it was good), etc. Perhaps in 10-20 years time, people may actually find something about 2010s/2020s to be nostalgic over, whatever that might be. Most users here might think this era is incredibly sloggy, but again, there are children right now that could have a rose-tinted view about this era in the future, since they won't have to be aware of all the crazy stuff that's happened right now. covid notwithstanding
As I said above, the 2000s was a very bifurcated decade, the bad stuff was going on but was more effectively tuned out and there was a lot that was cool about the decade.
But of course I'm sure the younger you were, the better time you had, the older you were, the more the reality of what was going on probably weighed on you.
As for your other point, we're already starting to see 2010s nostalgia, Five Nights At Freddy's is already treated as a nostalgic ip by some, which is nuts to me, I remember when that first game came out in 2014 like it was yesterday.
