Has the world gone mad?

Doesn't it really seem like the world has gone totally insane? Consider what has occurred in the last sixteen weeks:\n1. Terrorists destroyed two of the tallest buildings in the world. On the same day, terrorists struck the Pentagon -- the symbol of America's military power. America continues to be "on high alert" for another terrorist attack.\n2. All-out war in the Middle East seems imminent. Palestinian terrorists continue to kill Israeli citizens, provoking Israel to become more intransigent. The Bush administration is considering cutting ties with the Palestinian Authority. Peace has never seemed more distant.\n3. India and Pakistan, both nuclear powers, have come to the brink of war. Last Friday, India tested a short-range missile capable of delivering a nuclear weapon. Needless to say, India did very little to de-escalate the situation. Who knows what's going to happen there.\n4. Argentina -- potentially a major world power -- collapsed. Last December, Argentina had five different presidents in one two-week stretch. It defaulted on its $142 billion national debt, its currency lost almost half its value and there've been several riots. One worries that the crisis will turn them away from capitalism.\n5. Enron, the seventh-largest corporation in America, turned out to be a mirage. It was a fraud that made big guys $1.1 billion richer and ruined hundreds of little guys. One of the big guys, former vice-chairman J. Clifford Baxter, committed suicide last Friday. This thing is really starting to stink.\n6. "HIV/AIDS is likely to surpass the Black Death as the worst pandemic ever," Peter Lamptey, president of the Family Health International AIDS Institute, told The New York Times Jan. 25. AIDS has killed 25 million people and infected 40 million more. Infection rates are rising in China, Russia and Africa.\nWhat happened? In my twenty-four years, I can't remember a time when the world felt less stable. I can't recall when problems seemed so overwhelming. I came of age during the "rockin' nineties," believing peace and economic prosperity were the norm.\nEvidently, it wasn't the norm but the exception. Peace is precarious. Parts of the economic boom were built on quicksand. The problems were damming up all along, waiting for the right trigger to unleash it. "We've lost our innocence" is a platitude that surely doesn't adequately describe our reunion with history. The world hasn't gone any more insane than it's always been.\nRather, we've been stripped of our illusions. Illusions comfort us by obscuring reality; they make us feel we are capable of more than we truly are, that the world is destined for utopia and that the problems we face are not all that serious. \nTragedy is reacquainting us with reality. Reality is considerably more difficult to handle. Reality's unsettling. Many problems simply cannot be solved quickly or easily. More importantly, we find that we have real limitations.\nMindful of its limits, humbly approaching world problems, America is better able to realize its actual potential than ever before. Great tragedy presents great opportunity. \nSpeaking of great opportunity, President George W. Bush will deliver his first State of the Union address tonight. Chance has given him the opportunity to lead a nation willing to be led. I'll certainly be hoping he leads us somewhere other than the local mall.