INTRODUCTION

The Short Century

The decade of the 1990s ended with a party. As the clock struck midnight on 31 December 1999 people around the world welcomed a new millennium that only the dreariest of pedants noted would not really begin for another twelve months. That issue was beside the point. The millennial celebration might have been manufactured and illtimed, but it was fun. However, did it really mark the end of an era? Only rarely have the pivotal events of human history happened when the years end in zeros. For that reason, historians of the modern world look to the French Revolution in 1789 to mark the end of the ancien régime, the beginning of the nineteenth century, and the start of the modern world. Similarly, the outbreak of World War I in 1914 serves to close the chronological brackets on the nineteenth century. There are good reasons for this demarcation. The optimism that had marked America's colonial and westward expansion and industrial development suffered a rude shock in the trenches of the Great War. Also, though the United States emerged from the war relatively unscathed, American poets, preachers, and philosophers were no longer confident in the triumph of their civilization. Yet, neither was there any possibility of turning back from America's new status as a global power in the century that lie ahead. In war, commerce, culture, and virtually every sphere of human endeavor, the decades after 1914 made up Americas century. However, if the nineteenth century was long, America's century started late and ended unexpectedly. The Berlin Wall, symbol of the Cold War, fell in November 1989; a year earlier, no one could have predicted such an event. The Soviet Union abandoned one-party rule in 1990 and ceased to exist the next year. The United States entered the 1990s as the world's only remaining superpower. At the same time, digital technology was transforming the way people communicated, did business, even the way they thought. New technologies, especially the manipulation of the genetic code, promised to cure and prevent genetic malfunctions from cancer to birth defects. Meanwhile, old diseases such as tuberculosis, thought defeated in the age of antibiotics, as well as newly emerging diseases such as the hantavirus, threatened to reverse the twentieth century's revolution in health care. The relative affluence of the United States and much of the West—unimaginable a century earlier-contributed inadvertently to the strains on the global ecosystem in the form of global warming, acid rain, and a rapid depletion of the planet's biodiversity. Overall the 1990s began as a decade full of promises that were not fulfilled when it ended.

End of the Cold War

Though the dissolution of the Soviet Union was greeted enthusiastically in America, it was a mixed blessing. Though President George Bush was able to use the new post-Cold War global dynamic to build a temporary coalition that defeated Iraq in the 1990 Gulf War, his "new world order" proved to be exceedingly disorderly. In the former communist state of Yugoslavia, national and religious rivalries that had been suppressed under communism re-emerged with a level of carnage not seen in Europe since World War II. Similar conflicts in Africa and elsewhere, and America's frustration in coping effectively with them, suggested that though the United States had in some ways "won" the Cold War, it had by no means won the peace. In the Caribbean, Fidel Castro continued to thumb his nose at American foreign policy as he had done for forty years. In Iraq, Saddam Hussein, though defeated militarily, still clung defiantly to power. The blunt tools of the Cold War era proved valueless in dealing with local and regional conflicts. The fear grew that though the end of the Cold War made global thermonuclear war with Russia less likely, the risk of a regional nuclear war involving India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea, or some other well-armed power increased dramatically.

Brave New World

Time justified its choice of Albert Einstein as "Person of the Century" with a quotation from Einstein himself, "Politics is for the moment. An equation is for eternity." However, the technological innovations that bore fruit in the 1990s, such as the Internet, the proliferation of personal computers, and genetic engineering, were all the products of long, painstaking work on the part of thousands of scientists and engineers who measured progress in the smallest of increments and who built on ground broken decades earlier. The changes were, nonetheless, momentous. At the beginning of the Gulf War, reporters for the Cable News Network (CNN) reported live from Baghdad. That reporters could cover the action live already seemed to be taken for granted, but never before had virtually instant coverage of developing events become so crucial and even so expected. Also, though the Internet had existed for decades as a way for computers to communicate with each other, the development of the World Wide Web and easy to use operating systems and programs as well as substantially cheaper, faster, and more powerful computers, gave millions of Americans a way to send e-mail, download music, and buy books "on-line." The purpose and function of computers had changed: no longer were they used just to compute, but to communicate, advertise, and sell things. People could stay in touch more readily—e-mail seemed less intrusive than a phone call, and neither as formal nor as much trouble as writing a letter—-but in so doing, they became increasingly isolated from their real neighbors. Computers became more powerful, not just in what they enabled people to do, but in the ways their use shaped human behavior and made people dependent on them. The Y2K Bug demonstrated the power and the vulnerability of a digital society. The programming glitch that threatened to crash computers world-wide as their internal clocks turned from "99" to "00" caused doomsday scenarios to seem realistic and even sober people bought electric generators and stored away a few weeks of groceries just in case the electrical and commercial infrastructures failed at the stroke of midnight.

Communications Revolution

Computers started to displace typewriters in American offices during the 1980s. By 1999, the once-familiar clickety-clack of typing had been silenced, replaced by the plastic sounds of computer keyboards. E-mail replaced pen-and-paper correspondence. Cellular phones and pagers intruded into restaurants, trains, and other public venues. Technology stocks skyrocketed in value, dominating the financial news. Because the World Wide Web had no central structure and few rules, people could promote any cause and sell any product on it as long as they found an audience. Hate groups could target young people with seductive messages of racial pride, but so too could the government, churches, community organizations, and schools use the medium to promote their concerns and keep in touch with people. It also offered extraordinary opportunities for entrepreneurs with an idea and a modicum of funding. America Online, Netscape, Amazon.com, and others offered services no one had imagined a need for in the 1980s. They grew exponentially to keep up with demand. The rapid and unforeseen expansion of the technology and Internet sector, reflected in the Nasdaq stock index, made millionaires out of thousands of small investors in start-up companies that had brought little more to the table than an idea, a business plan, and a commitment to hard work. Among the most successful, Amazon.com, sold books over the Internet. Turning a profit from the first month of its existence, eBay.com simply provided an electronic infrastructure for customers to bid on each other's possessions. For a while in the late 1990s, investors ignored such traditional indications of stock worth as earnings—or even potential earnings—and poured millions of dollars into dot com companies. The market corrections of early 2000 shook out some of these companies, but in the last half of the 1990s, the American economy had entered a new era whose rules had not yet been discovered and in which everything seemed possible. Yet, in spite of the glamour of the new economy, Americans worked harder and longer to stay ahead. Industrial workers found themselves competing with laborers in Asia and Latin America whose standards of living and low pay made them inviting to American manufacturers. Other employers, desiring "flexibility" in the workforce and needing to lower expenses to maintain earnings, depended increasingly on part-time and temporary workers who received no health care or retirement benefits. At the same time, cost-cutting executives received large salary packages. Many workers unprepared for the high-tech work environment worried about their future.

Moderation and Extremism

For most Americans, the decade of the 1990s was a time of plentiful employment opportunities. In his 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton hammered again and again on the Bush administration's seeming lack of interest in domestic issues. His campaign staff members repeatedly proclaimed "It's the economy stupid!" as they marketed the Baby Boomer governor from Arkansas to voters accustomed to presidents who had been born in the Depression. Clinton won the elections of 1992 because he was a master of television campaigning. His two-term presidency succeeded because the economy prospered, inflation stayed in check, and virtually anyone who wanted a job could find one. He defined himself as a New Democrat, which meant that on occasion his fiscal and trade policies had more in common with Republicans than New Dealers. Such moderation played well in the 1990s. In spite of several manifest political and personal blunders, voters approved of the job he was doing. Strident voices on the right, such as that of perennial presidential candidate Pat Buchannan, complained that the administration was selling out the country while advocates of traditionally Democratic agendas, such as labor and the environment, feared that their values were being ignored in the rush to the center. Real extremists, from anarchists to neofascists, were largely ignored by the majority unless they turned, like the Unabomber, to violence as a means of communication.

Focus for Discontent

Schools have long served American communities as a locus of community identity. High-school and college sports teams provided something around which people could rally. Learning was pretty much taken for granted, as was inequality. Even after the integration of most schools in America, there were rich school districts and poor ones. Some teachers were effective; some were not. By the 1990s, schools were being expected to do more and more, providing social and psychiatric services for communities and families while preparing young people for successful, productive lives in a rapidly changing economy. Education was a high-stakes, competitive game in which the losers faced a lifetime of low-paying and low-status jobs. Thus, it mattered that the Constitutional demand for "equal protection" came to be applied to schools where the opportunities were anything but equal. Not only were well-heeled private schools able to offer the children of well-to-do parents a superior education, but also public schools in suburban districts benefitted from a strong tax base and voters willing to put tax money into school facilities and teacher salaries. Students at inner city and rural schools made do with fewer resources. Some succeeded in spite of the uneven playing field, but many more did not. The problem was addressed in the 1990s, but was far from solved. Some parents took the education of their children into their own hands through home schooling, often for religious reasons, but sometimes because they felt they could do a better job than the public schools. In addition, as schools reflected the violence of the broader community, parents worried about their children's safety in the classroom. In brief, school became politicized more than at any time in the history of public education. Taxpayers and parents demanded results, but there were no quick fixes to be had. President Clinton's goal of making the Internet available in every classroom largely missed the point. The Internet served as a vast, randomly organized library, as a place to chat and look for ideas, but was it an educational tool? Millions of dollars were spent rather uncritically on computers for classrooms that might have been better spent on books or painting or dance classes.

Superstars and Consumers

Sports, music, and movies in the 1990s were dominated by superstars. It was easier to market stars than teams, and big-time sports, more than ever before, were packaged to sell. The difference between the rock concert and the playoff game was a matter of content, not organization. Often enough, the lines between sports and other amusements blurred into a homogenized entertainment package that catered to spectators who watched on TV and to advertisers who watched the spectators. The advertisements aired during the Super Bowl were regularly more interesting than the plays. However, though sports were increasingly cornmodified, they never quite lost their purity. Records were made and broken as women and men pushed themselves to the limits of muscle and mind, and the unexpected happened just often enough to make watching interesting. Among the millions of people who still played sports for fun, a gradual transition seemed to be taking place. Americans still went bowling, but not often in leagues. They ran, they swam laps, they played raquetball with a friend, but teams and leagues, except among the young, foundered in the growing fragmentation of American culture. Even in religion Americans reflected their pervasive individualism. From New Age Spirituality to mainstream churches, Americans turned to religion more often to "meet their spiritual needs" than out of a sense that worship and service was something they ought to do. Traditional Protestant—and some Catholic and Jewish—congregations became increasingly entertainment oriented. Worship became more lively and less tied to traditional ways of doing things, but the ease with which Americans moved from denomination to denomination—looking for comfort, not theological resonance—suggested that few bothered themselves much with the theological content of their purported belief. Moreover, the emphasis on family values often served effectively to exclude gays and lesbians and others who were not part of traditional family structures.

Style

If the 1980s was the decade to dress for success, the 1990s was a time for going casually to work and scruffily just about everywhere else. It all started—like so much else in the decade—with the computer and Internet industry where the highly skilled and creative designers, programmers, and engineers at Microsoft, Apple, and Adobe as well as hundreds of start-up companies had never bothered to learn to wear a tie. When IBM, the traditional domain of the starched white shirt and striped tie started to follow the trend in casual attire, it was only a matter of time before "white-collar" workers around the country started wearing golf shirts to work. Traditionalists grumbled about the loss of dignity, and a great many company men and women kept on their business suits, but in fundamental ways, the meaning of what one wore had changed dramatically. The stiff and starchy business suit, whether worn by women or men, had for decades denoted the power and status of the wearer. Business executives, doctors, and bankers wore suits. Salespeople did too, but mostly so that they could fit in with and look like the executives. Golf shirts were normally worn at the golf course. However, in the technological revolutions of the 1990s, engineers and programmers, not white-collar workers, dominated the economy, and their value was in what they knew how to do, not in the aura of respectability they exuded. Thus, the most highly valued workers in America started showing up for work wearing pretty much what they pleased. Women who in the 1980s might have worn dark-colored "power suits" with heavily padded shoulders, could dress in feminine pinks, or even blue jeans and hiking boots. Male or female, the higher their status, the less their employers cared what they wore. Yet Americans, especially the young, always cared about such things. In high school fashions pushed toward extremes the Baby Boomer parents of the so-called Generation X could not have imagined in their own youth. Early in the decade, when the Seattle "grunge" band Nirvana exploded onto the nation's musical scene, white youth gleefully embraced the band's thrift-store look. The ever-obliging American fashion industry moved quickly to supply over-the-counter fashions, including stack-heel combat boots and other paraphernalia of alienation. The "Goth" look, with white face makeup and black trench coats, was made infamous—and thus attractive—by its association with the 1999 school shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado. Black youth responded more readily to the "hip-hop" look of rap musicians, wearing hooded sweatshirts, expensive sneakers, and ballooning pants hung so low around the hips that the designer-underwear label showed. Even the most utilitarian things people used, from toothbrushes to automobiles, came to be expressions of individualism.

Law and Justice

For Americans whose exposure to the courtroom had been largely limited to episodes of LA. Law and Ally McBeal, the real-life courtroom dramas of the 1990s were both revelatory and disturbing. The trial of O. J. Simpson, played out live for over a year ended with most whites in America persuaded of his guilt and most blacks believing in his innocence. The only opinions that mattered, those of the jury, found him not guilty, but Americans of every race believed that, had the former football star and actor not been able to match the legal talent and financial resources of the Los Angeles prosecutor's office, his conviction would have been a foregone conclusion. Almost equally disturbing was evidence, presented by the defense, of misconduct, incompetence, and racist attitudes on the part of police officers charged with investigating the murders of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson. That situation, combined with the memory of the videotaped police beating of black motorist Rodney King and the subsequent failure of a jury to convict the officers involved, left millions of black Americans feeling that equal justice was still a distant dream. Indeed, the emphasis on law and order of the 1980s and 1990s had its drawbacks. State and federal prosecutors succeeded in convicting and imprisoning record numbers of criminals during the 1980s. Perhaps because people convicted of violent crimes or serious drug offences could count on serving long prison sentences—often automatically extended to life on the third felony conviction—the violent crime rate fell during the 1990s as prison populations skyrocketed. Yet, the criminals that most concerned Americans seemed disturbingly immune to threats of prosecution and punishment. When a young woman named Susan Smith strapped her two young sons into their car seats and sent the car rolling into a South Carolina lake, she initially reported that a black man had taken her car and children and tearfully appeared on national television to beg for their safe return. When she confessed to the crime, most people just felt sick at heart. Likewise, the rash of school shootings, culminating in 1999 at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, left law enforcement and school officials scrambling to make children and parents feel safer by installing metal detectors and monitoring behavior, but no one knew how to predict or prevent such random violence. For only the second time in American history, a president of the United States was impeached by the House of Representatives and tried by the Senate. President Bill Clinton stood accused of lying to a grand jury and using his position to obstruct justice. Few people doubted that he had done precisely that, but a majority of Americans refused to accept the Republican contention that his actions constituted "high crimes and misdemeanors." Americans seemed to have become tired of scandal mongers, and Clinton agreed. Clinton was acquited and the Independent Prosecution Law, enacted in the wake of the Watergate Scandal (1972), was allowed to lapse. Clinton continued in office, acquitted, if not entirely vindicated in the eyes of the American people.

Uncertainty

At the end of the century, Americans were better connected, wealthier, and more diverse than ever before. Yet, it was neither the prosperity nor the technology that made the 1990s remarkable. Americans sensed that they were entering into a new era in world history, radically different from even the recent past. The "greatest generation" that had weathered the Depression and fought World War II was entering into its twilight years. The oldest members of the postwar Baby Boomer generation were nearing retirement. The future for their children seemed to harbor the brightest of possibilities, but in a rapidly evolving world, no one felt particularly secure. Retirees feared that the younger generation would not remember or respect the sacrifices they had made. Young people feared that the Baby Boomers would bankrupt Social Security. Black people struggled for economic parity, and whites feared that parity would come at their expense. Even the decade's most pervasive innovations, the Internet and the World Wide Web, were fraught with uncertainty. The pervasive image of the Internet, as an infinitely expandable and evermore complex web of interconnected points, was threatening in a world where personal responsibility, the concomitant of power and freedom, was not a widely cherished value, Diversity, the mantra of both major political parties and the password of the Internet, demanded of many Americans a degree of tolerance they were not prepared to grant. Like Prospero, the rightful duke of Milan in William Shakespeare's The Tempest, America in the 1990s wielded enormous power but, confronted with new and dangerous opportunities, was as yet unsure what to do with it.