To this episode of yeah. Yeah. Good morning, folks. Good morning, everybody. Welcome. Welcome to our semesters. Final class of the american 1990s. Its good to see you all this morning. Today we are going to take up the contested zakk heists of the 1990 and well examine and discuss several ways in which we can define the decade, a decade that saw the rise of the popular internet, that saw the first ever impeach months of an elected u. S. President. Thats all spasms of deadly terror on american soil. But first, before we really get going, let me go over a few terms that will figure in our assessment this morning and those terms include zeitgeisty, zeitgeisty. This is borrowed from german and refers to the defining or animating spirit of a period of time. The zeitgeist of the nineties in america is contested and will seek to define that site. Guys today. The term ipo also will figure in our discussions. Ipo for our purposes refers to the initial Public Offering of shares of Netscape Communications. In 1995. Netscape was a california startup that made and marketed a breakthrough web browser in the midnineties. And its highly successful ipo, its initial Public Offering of shares in august of 1995, had the effect of signaling to the world at large that there was money to be made on the internet. The ipo of netscape also illuminated the web for millions of people who were then just becoming acquainted with the online world. Well, refer as well to the double murder case brought against former football star o. J. Simpson in what at the time in the midnineties was called the trial of the century. Well also mention the case of the unabomber, this lone wolf terrorists, a harvard graduate who sent deadly package bombs to his targets periodically. From 1978 to 1995 and will refer to federal crime legislation sponsored and pushed by then senator joe biden and which became law in 1994, during the presidency of bill clinton. And this crime legislation has been criticized since then for disproportionately targeting minorities. Well make reference as well to the genocide in rwanda in 1994, when 800,000 people were slaughtered in a period of 100 days. In a gruesome, ethnic driven murder spree that western nations did nothing to stop. Well also mention the y2k phenomenon, the y2k fears, which were that at the end of the decade, at the end of 1999, as the calendar switched to the year 2000, the computers would have trouble recognizing the advent of the new millennium and would think that it was the year 1900 instead. And if that happened, the fear was that everything computer based would go haywire. The y2k fear. So lets consider this zeitgeist the elusive zeit christs of the nineties and take a look at some of the description, ones that will go over later today are the nineties best identified as the internet decade. Is it the decade of spectacle. The terrorism decade. The clinton dominated decade. Was it the seinfeld decade . Were the nineties . The seinfeld decade . Or were the clueless decade. Or were they the best decade id ever . Or was there Something Else . Is the zeitgeist of the 1990s defined by some other term or characterization . And again, its like, guys, this is the fighting spirit of the time of the nineties for our purposes. So lets take a look and let me say at the outset that this presentation is drawn in part from the content of my 2015 book about the year 1995, published by university of calornia press. The book describes major events that year andow those events and developments resonate and reverberate in amecan life. And 1995, notably, was the year in which the internet went from a vague and distant, curious city to a phenomhat would change and alter the way people work. Shop, learn, communicate and interact. So was it to start with . Was it the internet decade . Is that the proper way to define and characterize the zeitgeist of the 1990s . What do you say . Any thoughts . The 1990s as the internet decade. Well, thanks. Yeah. I mean, i think it definitely was the birth of the internet, but i think as we see how marshall used the internet nowadays, i would say that were closer to the internet decade. The is where now you mean is more likely the Internet Time than 20 some years or 30 years ago. So. Okay. Okay. Michael, back to the beginning there. The thing that we have, especially with the internet now that they just began, like the late i think the early 2000, from 2000 to 2010 is really the time receiving inc. Is like every facet of like before that it was just like in there use it and so the catch on would do that goes and so i dont even think about it but do you think it may have been too primitive back in the nineties at least compared to the internet, the online world we know today . Maybe. I dont know if people have like on computers at the time. I think thats probably grown over time. But i think any other thoughts about the nineties as the internet decade. Okay. Lets take a look at some of the arguments for the notion. And its undeniable that there were real breakthroughs in the nineties in terms of making the online world accessible. And im thinking here of the emergence of popular web browsers. Netscapes navigator and microsofts internet explorer. Four two were two ways in which people began to access the online world. They didnt need to code. They didnt need to have anything but a an internet connection, a computer and Web Browsing Software and its important and impressive really to keep in mind how some of the prominent entities of the online world that we know today trace their roots to the 1990s amazon. Com got going, started selling books online in july of 1995 and became this bmf that it is today. But its interesting how almost no one noticed when amazon opened for Business Online in 1995, selling books a very modest start to this entity that became huge within the 2030 year period. Craigslist. It traces its origins to the mid 1990s, attracting what newspapers used to refer to as classified advertising and relied on for a lot of their advertising revenues. Craigslist became a dominant force, began in the bay area in san francisco. And as extended, of course, across the country, google got started. Google was launched in 1998. So you can see that these are three important entities important to us today that have their roots in the 1990s and the ipo that Netscape Communications launched in august of 1995 had the effect of illuminating the web for the world and also signaling that there was money to be made online. There was money be made online. And of course, the online world in the nineties was primitive, thereno doubt about it. You needed taccess the web through a dial up connection, a fuy dial up connection. But this clearly was the launch pad. The launch pad of the internet, the popular internet. Lets take some arguments against it, against this notion that the nineties were the internet decade. It was a primitive online world back in the time. And really only vaguely does the online world of the nineties resemble what we know as the internet today. Its only vaguely familiar portability and social media, which are of course common features of the contemporary online world. Were best, at best vaguely anticipated. In the 1990s, and that was the time when the killer app of the internet was email. Casualties were many among the prominent start ups, among the prominent entities of the nineties, netscape lost to microsoft was crushed by microsoft and what were called e browser wars of the late 1990s, when microsoft mustered all its resources and trained them on this upstart Netscape Communications and effectively crushed it. This got microsoftnto microsofts into some antitrust trble that it successfully dodged in the early 2000s. But nonetheless, there were some ntversial measures that microsoft took to crush netscape, which entually was acquired by america online, and then proceeded to be disappear by aol. Altavista used to be the go to webeah engine in the nineties, but by the early 2000s, it was gone, mostly forgotten, superseded ooe and altavista. Its a remember today. Its remembered as a nostalgic artifact of the 1990s. So too is prodigy, wch w a popular dial up information service, kind of like the internet on training wels, if you will. Prodigy was a popular way to get li in the nineties, didnt make much money, and really did not survive theecade. So the point here is that some of the online entities that began and started up in the nities and were prominent during the decade didnt survive very long. So lets move on to another passive role characterization definition of the nineties. The nineties as a decade of spectacle and maybe thats the defining zeitgeisty of the decade. And think about some of the cases of the 1990s, the o. J. Simpson trial of 1995. The case began in 1994 and unspooled throughout most of the year of 1995. And it was an obsession. It was an obsession for the american population. For many parts of the american population. In 1995, o. J. Was a very popular former football star pitchman and movie actor who was accused of fatally stabbing his wife and her friend outside her condominium in los angeles in 1994. The trial was televised and it gripped america. It was as i say, an obsession as it continued over most of the year 1995 and the trial, which ended in o. J. Simpsons acquittal on both counts, on both murder counts, left us with a number of aphorisms that remain popular, if you will, and perhaps the most prominent are perhaps the decades most important quotation, if it doesnt fit, you must acquit a line used in the closing arguments by johnny cochran, who was ojs lead defense lawyer. And it was a reference to the witness or to the witness gloves that were used by supposedly by the killer of these two people. And during the trial, the prosecution had o. J. Try on the gloves, and they couldnt. And it didnt fit. Johnnie cochran, remember that episode and invoked it in his closing arguments. If it doesnt fit, you must acquit. Perhaps the best known single line of the 1990s, another spectacle of the nineties clearly was that of the impeachment and trial of bill clinton in 1998 and 1999. Clinton was the first us president elected president ever to be impeached and put on trial. He was acquitted at trial before the us senate, but the spectacle was unprecedented. He faced charges of obstction of justice, a perjury stemming from his intermittent affair. With a former intern 27 years his junior. He was acquitted, as i say, but the former intern, Monica Lewinsky, was amed and shunned and only in recent years has reemerged from her, from the shadows. Thcase had the effect of deepening partizan divides rtanitterness in the country. Those divides, those cleavages have become only morprounced in the years since the 1990s. So this this partizan rancor in some respects can be traced to the clinton spectacle. The spectacle of impeachment and trial of a sitting u. S. President. There are more spectacles of the nineties, two cases of terrorism, including the Oklahoma City bombing in april of 1995. That was an essentially a lone wolf terrorist attack that killed 168 people. Most of them in the target building. The Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City. Among the victims, the fatal victims were 19 children, 15 of whom were in the Federal Building at a daycare center. This remains to this day the deadliest act of domestic terror in us history. The attack on the Federal Building in Oklahoma City was preceded by exactly two years by the fire assaults undertaken by federal agents on the compound of the Branch Davidian sect near waco, texas. The Branch Davidians were suspected of harboring and amassing a store of illegal weapons. Federal authorities failed in several attempts to try to get them to surrender those weapons. And this led ultimately in april 1993 to this fiery assault on the compound in which more than 75 people were killed. The gulf war of 19 9091 was also a spectacle in some respects. The this was a us led military action to expel iraqi forces that had invaded and occupied neighboring kuwait in august of 1990, the Us Led Coalition in early 1991 expelled the iraqi forces from their occupation of kuwait. The war featured video of showing ecision bombing runs and attacks. Precision and airstrikes by us aircraft on targets in iraq and in kuwait. And even more of a spectacle related to the gul war was the victory parade in washington, dc in june of 1991, which featured tankinhe streets of washington, dc. The decade of spectacle. So why wasnt it the decade of spectacle . Well, no decade is without its spectacles, and the terrorist attacks of 911 really cement that argument. They eclipsed any nineties act of terrorism in lethality, in their awful theatricality. Nearly 3000 people were killed that day, september 11th, 2001. In the coordinated attacks on the twin towers in new york city and on the pentagon. The year 2000 brought an unmatched political spectacle in e United States there was a disputed outcome of the race between george bush and Vice President al gore. This dispu centered around the contested outcome in florida, where officially bush was 537 votes ahead of gore. Whoever won florida wins the election, wins the Electoral College and is sworn in as president. This dispute went on for more than a month. The spectacle of an un settled president ial election and unresolved president ial election wasnt decided until almost middecember 2000, when the Supreme Court essentially decided the outcome in a 5 to 4 vote. And the spectacle of impeachment, of course, was a nineties phenomenon. But it was even more of a phenomenon in the 2000, donald trump was impeached twice by the house of representatives, twice tried and twice acquitted. So impeachment is a spectacle. Then this one, if you will, trumps clintons. So was this the terrorism decade . Was this the decade of terrorism . Lets have a look. It is striking. It really is striking. How often and dramatically terrorism, acts of terrorism intruded on the 1990s and doing so in diverse and deadly ways. The World Trade Center bombing of 1993, a truck bombing that sought to topple the north tower into the south tower and collapsed the World Trade Center. That didnt happen, but six people were killed in this attack in 1993. In february 1993. It was a precursor, although we didnt know it at the time. It was a precursor to 911 when terrorists did target the twin towers and brought them down. The Oklahoma City truck bombing of 1995 was another moment in terrorism in the United States. In fact, it was the deadliest. It remains the deadliest act of domestic terror in american history. 168 people were killed there. The atlanta olympics pipe bomb attack. In 1996 was another case of terrorism intruding on the nineties. And in this instance, it brought it led to the false accusation against the person who discovered the bomb and tried to clear the area at Centennial Park in atlanta, clear the area of spectators early in the morning in 1998, in july 1996, that security guard, Richard Jewell, later was falsely accused by the fbi and the local newspaper in atlanta as being the suspect for having set planted the bomb. It was a false accusation. But jewell had to live with this for quite a while. And the Columbine High School shootings, the massacre at columbine in april of 1999, the shootings and the attempted bombings represents another moment of domestic terrorism. In the nineties. And, of course, there was the unabomber. The unabomber, this recluse who lived in a cabin, a crude cabin in montana, who periodically would make and send package bombs to his victims, to his targets. Heeg this intermittent spree in 197an continued. Until 1995. A total of three people re killed during these intermittent bombings and he continued until he sent to the New York Times d e Washington Post hi socalled manifesto, and told the newaps that he would continue to bomb people unless theyubshed his manifesto after considerable debate in the times and the post agreed to split the costs the publication costs on publicizing and publishing the unabombs manifesto. That publication was very ntversial at the time. In 1995, but it led to the unabombers arrest. His brother, his sister in law recognize some of the writgs in this manifest photo and thought it very much resembled ted kaczynski. They eventually the brother and mother and sister in law eventually alerted authorities who arrested kaczynski at his cabin in 1996. So what are some of the arguments against the notion that the nineties can be described as the terrorism decade . The nineties clearly set in motion or accelerated a National Cycle of fear about terrorism and the prospects of a terrorist attack. But the attacks, the ones weve described, tended to be infrequent. They were not common place in the nineties by any means. And the vulnerabilities of the United States in the nineties were not very well recognized, even after osama bin laden, the head of the al qaeda terrorist group declared war on the United States in 1996. Even then, those threats were not taken terribly seriously. The twin towers were attacked in 2001 to torments. Loss of life. So what do you guys think . Is the terrorism decade an appropriate way to characterize the nineties, or is it perhaps too narrow to constrain an important element of the nineties . For sure, but maybe not defining. Ever. I think similarly to what people previously said about the internet decade or defining the decade as the internet decade. Its kind of premature to state that here. As weve seen an increase in terror attacks and Mass Shootings and other, you know, events of terror in the last two decades rather than in the nineties. So i think that while yes, this was like the introduction to a few decades of terror, i wouldnt say that thi