World War II may be fresher now in the public mind than Vietnam. But in the next week, because of the anniversary, Vietnam will zoom close again in its vividness for those of us who remember it. To the young, it might as well be the Punic Wars. The others in the farmyard are stunned. I sometimes wonder what the furious acceleration in the rate of change in our lives does to the faculty of memory and to the moral meanings we are capable of absorbing from our experience.
History is a firehose.
I expect that any day now, we will enter a period of '90s nostalgia. 2001 Time Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.