Things Are About To Suck Much, Much More

And you’re not ready for what comes next

Unless you are quite elderly or from the developing world, you have never experienced anything like this before, and either you don’t yet understand what’s coming or you can’t quite believe it.

In World War II, the population was urged to grow victory gardens. Things like meat, sugar and gas were in short supply. Everybody knew a family that lost a father, son, husband or brother. Lots of consumer goods were unavailable because all our manufacturing efforts were devoted to supplying the military. I can remember seeing a 1940s magazine advertisement for a “modern” washing machine that stated none of them were available yet because we had to win the war first.

The 9–11 terrorist attacks were the worst and most shocking threat we experienced in my lifetime. Those attacks did change our politics, economy and culture (remember flying pre-2001? Oh, man, we did not know how good we had it!) but unless one of our loved ones was hurt or killed in the attacks or served in the military, the direct effects on our lives were mild. We weren’t urged to do anything but go shopping. (Seriously. If you’re too young to remember, that was literally President George W. Bush’s advice.)