Some years are years of human greatness; others of degradation. Some we look back upon with awe–1945, for instance, or 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell. Others leave us only with a sense of unresolved tragedy, as those years of the early 1970s, when America was leaving Vietnam.
And this year, 1995, now so rapidly passing? In struggling to characterize this odd and uncathartic year–not good, not bad; neither inspiring nor disastrous–I can come up with only one phrase. This was a “yes, but . . .” year.
Take, for instance, two areas of immense concern to Americans: balancing the budget and reforming welfare. It is clear that American society moved toward defining both of those issues in 1995. Indeed, in terms of recognizing the need for long-term solutions, the year will go down as a watershed one. But how did we as a people answer at the end of the year? “Yes, but . . .”
Europe was no better on these issues. France, with a welfare state whose menu makes America’s look like a Sunday school potluck dinner, was tearing itself apart over the same basic issue: the extent of government interference in the lives of its citizens.
But France’s answer to the possibility of change was even more equivocal than America’s. Sublime France answered, “Yes, but no.”
Russia got into the game early. All year long, the new “Mother Russia” tore herself apart. On the one hand, she knew there was no going back–to socialism, to Marxism, to the old collectivized state. But she also just hated the way things had turned out with the Western-imposed economic “reforms.”
So when parliamentary elections came in mid-December, the Russian people voted to bring the communists back–but not to go back to the past, either. It was Moscow’s own da/nyet syndrome.
In fact, the former communist nations of the Eastern bloc, from Hungary to Poland, the people elected–elected!–to bring the communists back. But these “new communists” said they were also “market reformers.”
It seemed the people were saying, “Yes, we want democracy, but we don’t want any pain, either.”
Everywhere one looked in the world, gray ambiguity stumped those few remaining simplistic folk who were still foolish enough to insist on clear answers.
The United States finally went into Bosnia militarily–but it insisted it was not to make war but to make peace (which purists might think is an odd business for an army, but no matter). The United Nations celebrated its 50th year, but no one was sure what it would do next. Japan said it wanted a more independent voice in the world, but somehow did not even have any food in its warehouses when the Kobe earthquake struck. Retired Gen. Colin Powell said he would really like to be president, but . . .
The CIA said that, yes, its top people failed to apprehend the most reprehensible American spy for the Russians ever to come out of its hallowed halls–but that it was not even going to punish those who failed to recognize the danger signals. Shannon Falkner spent two long years suing the all-male Citadel to enter as the first woman, but quit the first week. O.J. Simpson “won” his case for murder, but was then ostracized by the white community he had all his life struggled to join.
Economists talked endlessly and grandly about how a “globalized” economy was going to make Donald Trumps of all of us, but in globalization’s first real test, all the “hot money” from foreign investors fled Mexico and the country nearly collapsed.
“Yes, but . . .”
So, all right, what was wrong with this funny and finicky, unformed and unforming, year?
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Far from being one of those grand years of history, with great lessons that will guide all of us for years to come, 1995 was an interim year, a bridge year, a year in which people everywhere were saying, “That’s what we need to do; the problem is that’s not what we want to do.” It was a year that posed one compelling question: Knowing what has to be done, can or will people take the next step and actually do it?