Welcome back, history!
by Doc Cuddy

Now you see it, now you don’t. One minute there’s the World Trade Center, next minute it’s gone. In that instant a foolish, greedy American generation was jarred from its expensive, drugged sleep. Call them "the cocoon people."

Having once long ago nobly taken to the streets to end a far-off war, having unseated an evil president, the blind cocoon people rode their self-congratulatory goodness to unprecedented heights of wealth, scattering technological wonders like rose petals on the way to nasdaqian heights which might shame even Olympus.

Joining hands with bright young managers, they spread the word around the chummy global village: the digital keys to the kingdom of affluence are yours for the asking. Think, do, and then rake in the bucks.

All was well in the kingdom of Gates, and Welch, and Forbes, and Murdoch, and Reagan, and Clinton, and Bush. If once-poor streets around the world were not exactly now paved with gold, at least the glittering new buildings along them shone with a veneer of gold-leaf.

The past was a nightmare. The present an unfolding dream of better and better things to come. Under the vigorous, entrepreneurial guiding hand of investors and developers, the Gates of Eden were once again finally in sight.

A future, the only possible future, of ever-expanding wealth beckoned all along the wondrous yellow-brick road of free-market capitalism.

Never mind that 80% of this wealth was in the hands of 1% of the world’s population. A rising tide lifts all boats.

Never mind that every year the taxes the boomers paid from the comfort of their BMW cocoons were divvied up: $300 billion for war, and .003% as much for art.

Never mind that the cocoon peoples’ governments year after year after year buddied up with billionaire thugs around the world to keep trade (read "oil") flowing.

Never mind that the cocoon people applied their bright minds to the creative content of violence in movies, TV, games.

At play in the fields of cyber-glory, they were safe. Finally, they had shucked off the awful old world of their parents and marched profitably toward the shining gates of the New Eden.

But they woke up one morning to find their lithe, Gortexed, vegemaxed bodies turned to pillars of salt as, their backs stubbornly turned on the past, their unbelieving eyes watched the World Trade Center not just burn but… disappear.