I wrote this piece when I was seventeen, Bush was in his last term, and Obama had not yet changed my life (just a small exaggeration):
In the mid 1980s, the AIDs epidemic began. HIV was a mysterious and untrustworthy disease. No one, including the United States government, knew a lot about it. To increase their knowledge, they took millions of dollars away from public health money for hospitals in order to research and understand more about AIDs. As time went on and years flew by, in 1991, there was a measles outbreak. In all of the United States’ major urban cities, children were becoming infected with measles. This was the first outbreak in twenty-five years. Many pediatricians had never even seen a live case of measles. With low funding for hospitals, the United States had one of the lowest immunization rates in the world. Teen pregnancies and STDs were more popular than ever, and the country was in a war with Iraq.
The week of January 24, 1991 in Time magazine describes the Persian Gulf War by saying; “TV dramatically captures the first major war in the era of instant worldwide communication.” The Gulf War broke out in excitement, anticipation, and a televised view of the American military bombing the cities of Iraq. Saddem Hussein was getting away with murder and dictatorship. The United States could not have that happen. This war brought a level of hope to citizens thinking we were doing the right thing for once, helping out a country in need.
Citizens laughed at President Bush when he was amazed at bar code scanners in grocery stores. And then laughed again when Dana Carvy mocked Bush’s, “thousand points of light”. The world was a mess but, happy. Cruise vacations were as popular as ever and Disney World characters will probably never give as many autographs as they did in the 90s.
And yet, almost seventeen years later, we are exactly where we started. In Iraq, we are no longer fighting army versus army; we are fighting civilians, human life. We have executed Saddem and found no weapons of mass destruction. Our government is still holding onto a deceiving reason for killing innocent people in a country where we don’t belong, led by a different president we laugh at. HIV is becoming one of the largest epidemics in history, and there never seems to be enough public health to help everyone.
In the grand scheme of everything, of where our country’s history stands, how far have we gotten in these seventeen years? What have we to show for ourselves? Fewer cigarette advertisements than in the nineties? Sleeker cars? How can a human being born during these times feel significant? Our country still seems to be where we began. Helpless and stubborn. Is there a way to change history, to affect the world in only the eighty years a human has on Earth? Probably not. In truth, we all are born and then, we all die. Hundreds of years later, hundreds of wars will have passed and hundreds of people will never know you had existed.
During the 1990s, living in a world of excessive amounts of Disney Cruise promises and days when there could be liquids on airplanes, who and what can instill compassion and love into the world? Televised war in the Gulf and fear of a chemical attack does not seem like it will pull heartstrings. Academy Awards for Silence of the Lambs scares more than soothes and Color Me Badd’s I Wanna Sex You Up shakes heads rather than holds them high. There are just humane moments, a kiss between a couple in love, a mistake finally forgiven. There is just the opening of a door for a man in need, bringing a neighbor their newspaper or the first of many “I love you’s” shared between two people. There are even three-times-over-again oldest sisters, running down the halls of a public elementary school, heart pounding and thumping, the news of a new life reverberating in their mind and arms and legs. There is just an elementary school secretary much too excited, and a curly corded phone bearing the messages of a baby girl. Where there are seconds of pure bliss, literally jumping for joy, because your happiness cannot be expressed in just a smile. Not because that little baby is especially special, but because two parents are together, smiling and exhausted. Because it is a new life and because in the grand history of that family, that birth does mean something. It is just moments like those that embrace the human race, to keep it warm and tight, holding it together. The world I was born into? The world everyone was born into. A world of war and scary movies, of hope and love.
