War in Middle East proves the 2000s are back

The news, in brief …

• Israel and Iran continue to exchange missile strikes

  Following a “preemptive” strike from Israel, the two countries have fired barrages of missiles at population centers throughout the weekend. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to keep the strikes up for “as long as it takes,” while President Donald Trump has called for a diplomatic resolution of the hostilities.

• GOP pols express support for backing Israel in a wider war

  Sens. Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham said they were willing to back Israel to the hilt during stops by Sunday talk shows. Cruz called for “regime change” in Iran while Graham said the U.S. should escort Israeli attacks.

• Manhunt for gunman who shot Minn. lawmakers ends late Sunday

  Two Minnesota state-level legislators were targeted at their homes by a man posing as a police officer. Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband were killed. State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife were shot but survived. Police suspect Vance Boelter, an evangelical Christian who lives in the Minneapolis suburbs, of carrying out the attacks. He was arrested Sunday after a two-day manhunt.

• “No Kings” marches coast-to-coast

  As the president was marking his birthday with a military parade through Washington, D.C, anti-Trump protests blanketed the United States (and popped up internationally). Organizers estimate that around 5 million people attended the protests on Flag Day.

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Retro, mania

If you’ve paid a visit to your local mall anytime in the last year, it’s easy to see the 2000s are coming back around.

Rises are going lower, fits are getting baggier and t-shirts are getting tackier as the Bush-era comes up in the reliable 20-year trend cycle. But even if you haven’t strolled your closest shopping center since the days of Sam Goody, there’s no denying the aughts are in.

War is brewing, and Republican politicians are licking their chops to get involved in another Middle East quagmire. A tech bubble built on cheap credit and hype is poised to take down a significant chunk of the economy when the bill comes due. A politics of crassness has been retrieved from the dustbin of history, with the online right blowing crud off of the gleeful “boot in your ass” xenophobia of the post-9/11 years and finding it still works on the young and dumb.

In response, liberals have staged a massive, amorphous protest with unclear political goals that will generate headlines about its size before fizzling into nothing. Everything old is new again, and the standard distrust of anyone over 30 means we’ll have to watch the same mistakes play out. Warnings that this all really sucked the first time around will go unheeded. It’s a time-honored tradition to ignore old men when they take up an argument with the sky.

Still, there is some hope that the 2020s won’t be an exact replica of the vicious ‘00s. Back then, every major media outlet was calling out the cadence as America marched to war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is getting grilled about his attack on Iran while he tries to play up the need for U.S. involvement. (On Fox News, no less!)

It’s entirely possible that the aughts revival — I refuse to use the popular term “Y2K,” a design aesthetic that predates the one currently being aped by about half a decade — and the similar political situation are entirely unconnected. A popular meme traveling around social media describes the United States’ endless appetite for war in the Middle East, and things that never left can’t exactly come back. With Trump speed-running fascism in his second term, take some solace in the fact that no matter how bad the 2020s get, they might not be a retread.

What do you think? Are we doomed to repeat the meanest era in recent history? Will the 2020s end with a glimmer of hope/change? Sound off in the comments.

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