Recently at Reason.tv: Worst. Decade. Ever.

Hands down, the '00s were the worst political decade at least since the 1990s.

Reason.tv looks back at the (lack of) personalities, the scandals, and the screw-ups that made us all want to forget the first 10 years of the 21st century.

Approximately 2.10 minutes. No politicians were hurt in the making of this video.

Produced by Meredith Bragg and Nick Gillespie.

Scroll down for downloadable versions of this video.

Please subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube Channel.

For an alternate take on The Aughts, read Jesse Walker's Five Reasons For Optimism.

Comments

[hmm]

Still not the worst decade ever.

The qualifier in the first line of the body of text at least acknowledges the possibility it isn't the worst decade ever.

[The Libertarian Guy]

Hey, Obama has three more years to go. Plenty of time to make this the worst decade ever.

[BakedPenguin]

I'm sure there was a fair amount of facetiousness in the "worst decade ever" line.

What's scary is that there are so few issues in politics where we're moving in the right direction. The clusterfuck that is the Obama administration could change that, though, as they're proving to be a near perfect example of what not to do.

[Pro Libertate]

The first sentence makes it clear that the headline is a joke.

In 1999, I thought we were beginning to prevail. Wrong!

[hmm]

I got it. It just seems that this last decade is somehow become the end all be all of bad decades according to any and every possible group. The same thing happened with the financial mess. If one more retard said we were in the Great Depression one more time I was going to start choking people out.

While funny and I get the joke, it still gets old.

[Pro Libertate]

People are so melodramatic these days. As far as the financial mess goes, I don't think we're even close to the 70s, let alone the Depression. We might get there, but not yet.

[shrike]

The 00's were/are far worse than the 70's.

Inflation is much easier to cope with than deflation/depression. The 70's saw economic expansion and job creation despite the oil shock and stagflation.

[Ron Hart's Mom]

Blow me Shriek

"Oooo the deflation"

[BakedPenguin]

hmm & Pro Lib - while the rhetoric has indeed been overblown, I suspect that neither of you has had to look for a job in the past 2 years.

[hmm]

I have. And it sucks. Although I am in an interesting position life wise.

In the context of US history, this decade is just another period of time. If anything the election of a black man to what could still be considered the highest office on the planet makes the last decade one of the greatest to this point in history alone. Of course, the guy is a fucking Progressive assclown, but you can't have everything heh.

Lets not forget all forms of common asset measures have hit their all time highs. (dow, nasdaq, s&p, gold...) It seems like the bias towards more recent events and the things we (liberty minded people)see as infringing cloud the over all picture and timeline. Things aren't fucking awesome, but they are by no means "the worst" of much of anything.

[JohnD]

Unfortuneatly, this black president will make it exceedingly difficult for another one to be elected in our lifetime.

[hmm]

Our culture isn't that shallow.

[zoltan]

I have twice. It wasn't terribly easy, but then again, I'm not terribly qualified.

[Jeffersonian]

Best. Mash-up. Evah.

[The Libertarian Guy]

Didn't we see the Two Shit Sandwiches of the 2000 Election pic earlier this week?

C'mon, Reason, no need to punish us so harshly...

[D.A. Ridgely]

My Decade In Review here.

[hmm]

STOP TAUNTING ME!!!

[Brandybuck]

Scroll down for downloadable versions of this video.

What? Where? Stop taunting us!

[Suki]

Worst. Decade. Ever. Evah!

FTFY

My tech look at the yea hya.

[Steve]

Thank you for posting this!! I really like your blog...

Common Cents
http://www.commoncts.blogspot.com

ps. Link Exchange??

[the innominate one]

the worst thing about the past year, nay, the past decade, was the introduction of threaded comments at HnR

[Suki]

YOU LIE!

[dbcooper]

Threadjack:

http://www.nytimes.com/aponlin.....st.html?hp

Danish Police Stop Attack on Cartoonist

COPENHAGEN (AP) -- Police foiled an attempt to kill an artist who drew a cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad that sparked outrage in the Muslim world, the head of Denmark's intelligence service said Saturday.

Jakob Scharf, who heads the PET intelligence service, said a 28-year-old Somalia man was armed with an ax and a knife when he attempted to enter Kurt Westergaard's home in Aarhus shortly after 10 p.m. (2100 GMT) on Friday.

[zoltan]

He shoulda stuck to pirating.

[Tim Cavanaugh]

No decade in which Shatner covered "Common People" and all my kids were born can be all bad. But it still sucked pretty hard. Not just financial and war stuff, but just total suck, which of course is hard to quantify.

[JW]

I'm with Tim on this.

Almost the same deal for me, but beyond that, I'm struggling to find anything good that came out of the 'aughts. Sure, a good bit of really cool tech came out, but that's the case in almost any year. Beyond that, not much ranks above shit sandwich.

It's clusterfucks all the way down.

[Kolohe]

But, ironically coincidentally, the decade began by the ending of Suck.com.

[brotherben]

I suppose it just seems like the worst decade ever. The internet and a million cable "news" channels with their bubble headed bleach blondes have made us aware of all the shitty backroom half-assed politicking that goes on every minute of every day in the cess-swamp that is The D.C. The game hasn't changed much. It's just that we all know way too much about it now. Color me jaded just like the rest of you.

[Tim Cavanaugh]

Why does it have to be about politics? It seems to me the last ten years got steadily stinkier in all categories: job opportunities, real estate prices, natural disasters, terrorism, even cultural stuff (though I've been pretty checked out this decade; maybe I'll see Avatar and learn to love again). It's all subjective. If we were living in some countries I think we'd have a much sunnier notion of the last ten years. And even in this country we have much better streaming video online, more effective handheld devices, a lot more media, and iCarly. I'd definitely put iCarly in the credit column for Decade Zero.

[Chinny Chin Chin]

Nice copy of a style perfected on such prestigious outlets as VH1 and E! To make this style really sing, though, you need more D-list celebs, like the Sklar brothers. They'd have made Gillespie look like a comic genius.

[pete]

nope

[hmm]

This is like sitting in the barer shop listening to the 80 year old men piss and moan about how awful everything is today and it was all so much better 60 years ago.

For fuck's sake people. You'd think WWII or the Great Depression happened in the last decade.

[JW]

No, it's not that, but the 00's were a shitstorm of being pounded in the ass by your friendly, neighborhood politician, all the while pretending he/she is doing it for your own good. Yeah, nothing new, but the magnitude of it is.

An article in the WaPo this AM showed that the oo' had zero job growth. Yeah, I know, pick 2 points on a line and draw a line and you can make it say pretty much whatever you want it to, but it does underscore the craptacularness of the decade.

Of course, people will blame this on Bush, as well they should, but they will also conveniently ignore that he was only embracing and extending left-wing economic and command policies, mixing the worst of right-wing politics and amping all of it up to 11.

If you want an image to wrap up the 00's, imagine a thoroughly bound Lady Liberty, being dominated and violated by Pelosi with a strap-on from the rear while servicing Cheney in the front. Forever. (Throw in Obama as a gimp waiting in the wings, if you like, with all of the other usual suspects (Gore, Frank, Greenspan, Pearlstein, etc.) egging them on from the S&M peanut gallery.)

[hmm]

Woe is me. *swoon*

I never said it was all daisies. It just isn't the end all be all of shitty decades.

[Tim Cavanaugh]

There's plenty of reason to believe this decade will out-shit Decade Zero, but prophecy was given to fools.

[hmm]

I'm not even operating on assumptions of future shitty decades. A little context with a touch of history and the last decade was not that bad. It wasn't super duper great, but for god's sake it wasn't the end of the world.

[JW]

Not saying it is the end of the world. But it wasn't anything to look back on with fondness.

What I am saying is that it was a significant net negative in terms of economics and liberty and there isn't an optimistic future looking us in the eyes.

Change? Yeah, maybe we got that. Hope. Not so much.

[Dusty Minor]

Yup, rough decade indeed and ex dictator Bush is to blame for most of it!

RT
http://www.invisibility-tools.pl.tc

[The Libertarian Guy]

Yup, and the rough decade to come will be mostly the fault of dictator-in-progress Obama.

[Sameold Lameold]

Honestly, "Reason" staff, how many times are you guys gonna keep bumping this video to the top of your blog? It's over already!

Say good riddance to last year and get on with this decade... although I've got a feeling we'll be saying the same thing about this year when we get to the end of it, and the next year, and the year after that at the very least.

[BakedPenguin]

According to ABC News, 40,000 new laws have taken effect as of the new year.

Not an auspicious start to the new decade.

[zoltan]

I was pretty shocked to see this coming from ABC without a huge celebration of it.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Let me be perfectly clear: while the most recently completed decade saw much disappointment, there can be no debate that the worst decade ever was the Seventies.

[SIV]

the worst decade ever was the Seventies

Culturally it was a great decade.Film, music,easy unsafe sex,toleration of open drug use...what's not to like?
Sure the cars really sucked after 1972 but look back at what used cars were available.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Culturally it was a great decade.

Your anecdotal evidence aside, every decadeologist is in complete agreement that the 1970s was absolutely the worst decade ever. Even if we've been downhill ever since.

[SIV]

I was 7-17 yo in the 70s. I remember it fondly,excepting the gas prices which really limited the thrills of driving a $750 beater GTO,Road Runner, or SS396 Chevelle.I bummed rolling papers off a uniformed cop at a Ted Nugent show.As a geeky 16 yo I could hang out and drink in most any bar(as could girls 14 and up).The 1970s was,from a social libertine perspective, a Golden Age.

[MlR]

1910s (World War I) and 1930s (Great Depression). Both opened the door for Communism, Nazism, Fascism, Socialism (I repeat myself), aggressive ethnic, and a general breakdown in traditional moral limits.

[MlR]

1910s (World War I) and 1930s (Great Depression).

Communism, Nazism, Fascism, Socialism (I repeat myself), violent and aggressive ethnic nationalism, and a general breakdown in traditional moral limits.

[MlR]

Hard to beat decades with World War I and the Great Depression.

Communism, Nazism, Fascism, Socialism (I repeat myself), violent and aggressive ethnic nationalism, and a general breakdown in traditional moral limits.

[MRV]

And that was just last year!

[zoltan]

I don't see how the 1910's and 1930's were the decades in which "traditional moral limits" were transgressed.

[MlR]

I tend to agree with Michael Burleigh that the brutalization and violence of World War I, in particular, upended traditional views towards morality and what was permissible on the continent. I don't think radical movements such as the Nazis, their sister movements, or the Communists would have been able to break through political discourse otherwise. A possible exception is Russia, which had a stronger recent history of brutal politics than the Western countries. The Great Depression ushered the resulting demons into power.

[MlR]

Perhaps you confused me as referring to the battle in this country over the high profile 'lifestyle issues,' but when I say traditional moral limits I mean something deeper.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Mayhaps I haven't been perfectly clear. I judge a decade with the same criteria I use for everything else: aesthetics. 70s = worst. Period. I don't what system you people are using.

[Warty]

While the 70s were marred by hippies and disco, they did give us Dirty Harry, Black Sabbath, and some classic hippie beatings. What, I demand, did the 00s produce that is aesthetically superior?

[SIV]

Hippies and disco were offset by the glam,punk, and metal.I could buy MDA,'ludes or acid for not much more than the price of a school lunch.

[zoltan]

Damn, even with all that stagflation!

[Fist of Etiquette]

Yeah, yeah. The 70's brought us The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II. Great, huh? Except that they lead to The Godfather: Part III!!! And none of it is relevant to how goddam ugly the 70's were.

Look, I appreciate that the cheap and easy drugs you all did apparently covered your memories of that decade in eye-pleasing tie-dye, but for someone who was too young to remember anything but what he saw, the 70's was the worst. decade. ever.

I rest my case.

[JW]

The 70's were tortuous in that way too.

As a young lad in the 70's, we red-blooded male yout's were *always* waiting for some girl's tube top to release the goods during some particularly vigorous dancing or running, for example, but not once did they fail. Ever. **sob**

[JW]

And anyone that says that teenagers had it rougher today than in the 70's is full of it for one reason and one reason only: free Internet porn.

In my day, we had to embarrass ourselves in 7-11s and bookstores everywhere by laying down our hard cash for hairy 70's porn and then find a spot where your mom wouldn't find it. You wanted to watch a dirty movie? Better sneak over to your buddy's house who raided his dad's stash and get it back to its spot before he comes home.

Now, all kids have to do is turn on the computer. Harumph!