[cmrdporcupine]

Are you forgetting about the Kosovo war? How about the second Chechyan war? What about the Second Intifada? I could come up with a dozen other examples. It was not an era of peace.

That peace only looked like that for Americans? In their little corner of the world? Because their dominance at the time was basically unchallenged for a short period of time.

As for prosperity, yes, it was so for our industry. But it was a bubble. A really bad one. And for most other people it was actually an era of wage/income stagnation. And then a lot of people lost a lot of money in the .com crash.

[prepend]

It’s all relative. There was conflict. But the Cold War was over and 9/11 hadn’t happened yet.

It was a very optimistic time.

[cmrdporcupine]

Again, for North Americans on the whole. Maybe western Europeans if they didn't look too far over their shoulders.

I remember it as a very mixed time. Culturally optimistic here in North America, certainly. But I could certainly see the stormclouds.

When you say relative, you need to postfix that with "... to me."

[prepend]

> When you say relative, you need to postfix that with "... to me."

That’s what relative means, right? Adding “to me” doesn’t add much value to the meaning.

I’m not sure your point anyway. As even Western Europe and the entire world no longer feared nuclear Armageddon from the Cold War. There were other problems, of course, but that period for most of the world was more peaceful than the immediately preceding or following period. If you were in North America or Asia or Africa or anywhere.