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| Dick "Pacemaker Heartbeat Away" Cheney, Osama "My Mom Can Make The Costumes!" Bin Laden, Saddam "It's My Party" Hussein, Nickelback Dude |
Remember the early 2000s? For those of us who either weren't there, or weren't paying attention, let me recap:
Minor party functionaries in a southern state full of crazy ass old people, run by the brother of the Republican candidate, stopped the vote counting and threw the Presidential election, aided and abetted by both a partisan majority of the supreme court, and a media savvy enough to know that dramas and disasters boost ratings and profit; the most influential player during all of this was the owner of the world's biggest media conglomerate, who happens to be a citizen of Australia.
To be totally fair, both parties had the weakest slates of candidates in recent memory: each of the men running for President were unsympathetic and inarticulate at best, and the Vice Presidential contenders were both remarkably ugly and unappealing, with vicious personalities.
Taking full advantage of the resultant weakened and incompetently led new government, a radical militant Islamic Jihadist Arab from Saudi Arabia, related to that country's royal family, planned and carried out a series of unexpected and unconventional attacks within the borders of the US. These devastating events were completely undetected beforehand by our usually infallible intelligence services, all of which had gone through major organizational changes immediately following the election.
In response to those terrorist attacks, which demoralized a fearful public and threw the nation into economic panic, our government in turn carpet bombed a poverty stricken, mainly Pashtun populated country with no organized military, where the Arab Jihadist happened to live at the time. Emboldened by an easy victory, we next invaded another, totally unrelated neighboring nation, at great cost in lives and capital, effectively bankrupting our treasury and accomplishing nothing except the enrichment of military contracting companies, the largest of which the Vice President was a major shareholder in.
Meanwhile, the President urged the country to take vacations at Disney World (which happened to be located in the state run by his brother) as a solution to the economic downturn, as well as going on public record stating that he had no intention of apprehending the Saudi Jihadist behind the terrorist attacks. Inexplicably, in spite of all this, he won a second term in office.
For a large percentage of the population of this country, all of these events and actions seemed perfectly rational at the time, which may or may not tell us something about ouselves.
In other news, the media, and therefore the public, were obsessively fixated on the disappearance or death of various blond girls; association football (known as "soccer" in the US), remained the world's most popular sport; and some volcano blew up somewhere.
These were the most popular films from the years 2000-2005:
2000 - Mission: Impossible II
2001 - Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone ("Sorcerer's Stone" in the US)
2002 - The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers
2003 - The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King
2004 - Shrek II
2005 - Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire
And the top hit songs for those years were:
2000 - Breathe, by Faith Hill
2001 - Hanging by a Moment, by Lifehouse
2002 - How You Remind Me, by Nickelback
2003 - In Da Club, by 50 Cent
2004 - Yeah!, by Usher featuring Lil Jon and Ludacris
2005 - We Belong Together, by Mariah Carey
With only one exception, all of these hit movies were exceptionally well crafted and memorable. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for any of the chart topping songs.
Fun and exciting times, indeed.
Note: Of the four personalities from the early 2000s pictured above, only one is still alive today, and another is a zombie.
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