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Is Iran the Next Crisis Brewing?
“Iran’s breakout timeline is now at zero.”
What will historians make of the decade which began innocuously enough in 2020?
The sun was setting on a reasonably prosperous, mostly peaceful previous decade. At least, it was a decade when U.S. military conflicts- like Afghanistan and the War on Terror- were a comfortable distance away.
The economy was on track and picking up. Unlike European Union nations, which had been experiencing anemic GDP growth in the 1.5%-2% ballpark, the American economy engine was revving.
At the beginning of 2020, wage gains were looking good- for once. Average household income was up; unemployment was at historic lows.
Then COVID19 hit our shores and everything changed.
Well first, basketball legend Kobe Bryant was tragically killed in a helicopter crash, along with his young daughter, and several others. Kobe Bryant might have been holding the fabric of the universe together, because immediately after that, a word most of us had never even spoken before became, for so many, a byword, a lifestyle, a completely new set of habits that have some of us, even as COVID19 death counts continue to fall, still afraid of flying on an airplane, not for fear of crashes, but for fear of catching COVID19.