Axios Edge: The politicians’ hour has arrived

One Response to Axios Edge: The politicians’ hour has arrived

1. Peter Varhol says:

   March 25, 2020 at 7:39 pm

   I think back upon the nation-changing events of my life, and here is what I come up with. I was a first grader, coming home from school in 1963 to John Kennedy’s assassination. Along with the other two assassinations later in the decade, this was certainly a seminal time.

   The Vietnam War, where we had protests, ill-trained National Guard killing college students, and perfectly sane and healthy kids hiding out or going to Canada. This kind of overlaps with the race wars of the time, so it was a truly unsettled era. Disclosure: I came of age in the waning months of the war, and think I am considered a Vietnam-era veteran.

   The oil price shocks of the mid-1970, where gasoline went from 25 cents a gallon to a buck-fifty in a matter of days. I remember turning 16, buying 50 cents worth of gas, all I had, just to get home.

   The record unemployment and inflation, circa 1980-81. Nobody remembers any more that both were the worst since the Great Depression, and I get laughed at as I try explaining to young people that the boomers had difficult times too.

   Black Tuesday, 1986, was a blip, as we hope today’s stock market gyrations are. But more important in 1986, the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger. We were no longer masters of our own lives, but subject to the whims of the Fates.

   9/11. If anything compares to today as a nation-changing event, it was 9/11. Today there are working adults who were barely born then. I wish they would read about it, especially about Operation Yellow Ribbon. We owe a debt to the world. And to leadership. Whatever you may think about W, he stepped up to the plate in the weeks and months afterwards.

   The real estate crash of 2008/2009. I was not seriously affected here, but hundreds of thousands of people who believed their realtors that property values would only go up paid a dramatic price, and it left scars.

   Now today, with coronavirus. I am discouraged that (mostly) young people are behaving badly. I’m trying to advise them to stay the course on their 401Ks, but there is a lot of panic selling. I have a shorter runway at this time, but I have seen nation-changing events throughout my life. You will too.

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