The Hell Époque

Someday, there will be a need to give the times in which we currently live an appropriate moniker. A few days ago, while driving through snow on U.S. 29 back from Greensboro, the idea for one crossed my mind.

I've already started calling our present American era "the Hell Époque".

Obviously this is a pun on "the Belle Époque", which was the last real "golden time" that Europe had before World War I escorted us all into the modern world.

A future history book or Wikipedia entry might describe our own time thusly...

Hell Époque

The era of United States history that stretched from the early 1990s until the end of the first decade of the 21st century, that has come to be regarded as the final years of America's long-time domination of the world's culture and economy.

Although noted for considerable achievements in computers and telecommunications that led to apparent empowerment of the individual, the Hell Époque was also a time of cultural and political stagnation in America that coincided with tremendous loss of individual liberty as the American government began to seize unprecedented power. Most authorities agree that although this had already been a long-time trend in America, the election of Bill Clinton as U.S. President in 1992 saw the start of the final phase of escalation toward an all-powerful American state. This would climax during the presidency of George W. Bush, whose disastrous domestic and foreign policies catapulted the country toward utter ruin.

Most historians agree that it became widely accepted among the American people during the Hell Époque that their government had finally become too corrupt and that the life they had come to believe in had drawn to a close, and that the "rule of law" under the Constitution no longer existed. This was especially apparent following the collapse of the traditional "two party system" and the failure of the American economy in...

So... will time prove me wrong? The way things are going right now, it's not looking like it will. Unfortunately.