As The Band Plays On

A Sample of Events from 1996

President Clinton’s State of the Union address focuses on crime and drug policy, and includes support for a ‘grassroots’ effort to prevent teen pregnancy, which continues to climb. A week later, Clinton announces the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, with a board of directors including former New Jersey governor Thomas Kean, advertising executive Charlotte Beers, and actress Whoopi Goldberg. The National Campaign pointedly excludes DPCHE and former Surgeon General Elders, and focuses its efforts on advertising.

A Chicago-bound Amtrak train, the Capitol Limited, collides with a MARC commuter train bound for Washington, D.C., killing 11 people. In response, President Clinton calls for increased funding for rail safety.

The Australian government introduces a nationwide ban on the private possession of both automatic and semi-automatic rifles, in response to the Port Arthur massacre.

President Clinton signs an anti-terrorism bill which expands the FBI’s authority to wiretap suspects, limits death row appeals, and enables law enforcement to trace all explosive materials.

The Centennial Olympic Park bombing at the 1996 Summer Olympics kills one person and injures 111. Everyone agrees that the casualty count would have been much worse but for the intervention of security guard Richard Jewell, who discovered the bomb in a backpack. Jewell is awarded the Olympic Order during the closing ceremony, and will be invited to the 1997 State of the Union Address. The bomber, anti-abortion extremist Eric Rudolph, is quickly identified by tracing the gunpower he’d used in the bombs. A nationwide manhunt captivates the press.

With his support ebbing as a result of the booming economy and increasing public attention to the racist fringes of the Reform Party, Ross Perot fails to secure any electoral votes. Democrats retake control of Congress with 242 seats in the House and a 50-50 split in the Senate. Dick Gephardt becomes Speaker of the House.
 
August, 1996, Bainbridge Island, WA

Barbara White arranged her sons in the driveway for the obligatory back-to-school photo. Matt was starting second grade and Cody was eagerly anticipating kindergarten. To look at them, you would have thought they were closer together in age. Matt was on the short side of his class, a trait he’d inherited from his parents, but Cody was tall for five. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Barb knew that in a few years it would become obvious that Cody and Matt weren’t biologically related, but she could cross that bridge when they got to it.

After patiently posing for the picture, the boys trooped down the street to the bus stop. Barb waved goodbye to Cody as the bus pulled away, and then turned to Tina Gilmore. Her youngest, Justin, was also starting kindergarten, and had become Cody’s ‘bestest’ friend in the two years since the Whites moved out to Bainbridge Island. Their mothers had also grown close, despite the differences in their backgrounds. Barb had grown up in a wealthy and somewhat stuffy family back East, discovered women’s lib at Wellesley, and decided to go to medical school at Georgetown, where she’d met Arthur, who at the time was a staffer on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Tina had dropped out of high school to marry the father of her older son Jon, who luckily for her was the heir to a local construction firm. Now Tina was Secretary of the Magnuson Elementary School PTA, Johnny had taken over as president of the company upon his father’s retirement, and Jon was in high school. The younger boys idolized him, much to his annoyance and somewhat to Barb’s concern.

The latest crisis was a threat to get a tattoo. “He wants a big dragon,” Tina complained, “right on his chest.”

“Did he say why?”

“Because it’d ‘look cool,” Tina responded derisively.

“He should talk to some of the hepatitis patients I have and ask how cool they feel,” Barb commiserated.

“You get a lot of that?”

“Not typically, but there’s been a rash of cases lately. The problem is these fly-by-night guys that don’t sterilize their needles properly, they really ought to require a license to do it.”

“What do you think I should do about it?” Tina often asked Barb for parenting advice, figuring that her medical degree gave her a level of academic expertise on such matters.

“If he’s really serious I’d offer to take him to a reputable place, and make sure they sterilize the needles. If you’re lucky, that’ll make him drop the idea.”

Barb put the camera in her car and drove toward the ferry. She planned to get the pictures developed on her lunch break, so she could send a copy to Kristin.
 
A Sample of Events from 1997

President Clinton secures the passage of a welfare reform bill, along with an increase in the minimum wage and the EITC to fulfill his welfare-to-work goals. President Clinton also increases some taxes on the wealthy, resulting in a budget surplus, consolidates federal workforce development programs, and requires companies to spend 0.5 percent of their payroll on worker training. A bid for national exams in core subjects fails due to controversy over national social studies and health curricula.

Michael A. Hess succeeds Haley Barbour as chair of the Republican National Committee, becoming the first openly gay chair of a major political party.*

In Roslin, Scotland, scientists announce that an adult sheep named Dolly had been successfully cloned, and was born in July 1996.

The Labour Party of the United Kingdom returns to power for the first time in 18 years, with Tony Blair becoming Prime Minister, in a landslide majority in the 1997 general election.

Bloomsbury Publishing publishes J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in London

Diana, Princess of Wales, spends the summer in the Hamptons with her two sons, attracting a great deal of media attention for the first time since her divorce from Prince Charles.

James Cameron's Titanic, the then highest-grossing film of all time, based on the 1912 disaster and the 1985 discovery, premieres in the U.S.

Queen and David Bowie begin a joint world tour

*IOTL Hess died of AIDS in 1995. His biological mother’s attempts to locate him formed the basis of the 2013 movie Philomena. ITTL he reunites with his mother in 2004 and uses his political connections to lobby the Catholic Church for greater transparency regarding adoptions.
 
June 23, 1998 Tarnak Farms, Afghanistan

The jackasses in McLean had said this would be an easy job. Fly in, exfiltrate the principal, and you’ll be back home within a month. They hadn’t counted on the other guy having access to RPGs, and now one of the two choppers was down, and at least a couple of Mike O’Brien’s men were down with it. The rest were trying to get through to the compound where they had been told the principal was.

Their orders had been to do everything possible to minimize casualties, but O’Brien knew that wasn’t going to work. Besides, if these were really the same motherfuckers who’d almost blown up the World Trade Center, O’Brien figured they deserved it. He tossed a grenade in the direction of the heaviest fire, and it gave him enough cover to get to the building, followed closely by Schwartz. There was a brief exchange with one of the hostiles at the entrance, and then O’Brien and Schwartz went up the staircase.

They surprised a hostile, looked like a young kid, on the second floor landing. O’Brien tagged him before he had a chance to raise his weapon. After checking the body for explosives, O’Brien went upstairs and kicked in the door to the first room he came to. He immediately recognized the man reaching for a gun on the shelf as the principal – dark beard, white turban, unusually tall. Without hesitating, O’Brien squeezed off two rounds into his chest. Schwartz gave him another burst for good measure while O’Brien was busy subduing the woman in the room – presumably one of the wives.

“So much for taking him alive,” Schwartz remarked ruefully.

“He was going for the gun,” O’Brien responded, “we didn’t have an option to take him alive.” O’Brien pointed to the shelf, where a Kalashnikov lay next to a pistol. “Better get a photo, just to make sure our asses are covered. And while you’re at it, see if you can photograph some of these documents before the extraction team shows up. Might be something useful in here
 
Did you just kill off Bin Laden and avoid 9/11 (probably)?

9/11, the Cole bombing, and the embassies in Africa. The thwarting of an imminent attack through intelligence uncovered during the raid bumps up Clinton's approval ratings and enables the Democrats to pick up a few House and Senate seats in the midterms. The raid will become a subject of persistant conspiracy theories that the intelligence was faked to distract attention from one of Clinton's extramarital affairs and/or the global Zionist cabal, as well as the top grossing movie of 2007.
 
A Sample of Events from 2000

The world optimistically rings in a new millennium, which experts predict will be characterized by the increasing importance of the Internet, and the economic rise of Asia and Africa. Public health, seen as a major issue from the 1950s through the 1970s, takes a less prominent role in the discourse. Most experts assume that diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis will soon be conquered like polio and smallpox before them, and that the spread of Green Revolution farming techniques will address Africa’s chronic malnutrition. In America, rates of crime and teenage pregnancy are finally in decline, the budget surplus is rising, race relations and acceptance of homosexuality seem to be improving, and President Clinton’s reforms to welfare and the tax system are bringing poverty rates to the lowest levels ever recorded.

Artist Keith Haring completes a large sculptural installation at Chicago’s Millenium Park, across the Great Lawn from Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate

A telephone survey of adults between the ages of 18 and 50, conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago, finds that 29 percent of male respondents have one or more soft ear lobe piercings, 10 percent of male respondents and 25 percent of female respondents have at least one body piercing, and 24 percent of all respondents have at least one tattoo.

The dot-com bubble begins to burst

Mass demonstrations in Belgrade lead to resignation of Yugoslavia's president Slobodan Milošević.

Vice-President Gore defeats former California Governor Pete Wilson to become President. Wilson had campaigned on his ability to appeal to Reform voters, but his hardline anti-immigration stance ends up costing him Florida and Nevada. Reform Party nominee Donald Trump fails to carry any states, but he’s able to transition the buzz generated by his campaign into investments in a cable network specializing in the new genre of reality television. Democrats pick up four seats and a majority of the Senate.
 
June 1, 2001, Johannesburg, South Africa

The years since the end of apartheid had been good ones for Dennis Nkosenye. He had invested his meager savings into a small electronics repair shop, which gradually expanded as Johannesburg’s elite discovered. His employees, recruited from the hordes of migrants streaming into Johannesburg from the countryside, had quickly grown skilled enough to assemble the machines themselves, and they had begun doing so with the signing of a trade agreement between South African and the US in 1999.

Nkosenye had been able to obtain a loan from one of the American banks, and expanded his business until he owned a large factory on the outskirts of Soweto and an office in one of the new towers gracing the Johannesburg skyline. Now he was about to make the biggest deal of his career.

He allowed his mind to wander as the representative from Apple Computer extolled his company’s investment in “the new Africa.” Americans always seemed to want to make their business deals look like missionary efforts, but underneath the rhetoric they were just as mercenary as everyone else. Not that Nkosenye begrudged them, he would do as well from this deal as they would. The representative finished his speech and Nkosenye stood up to shake his hand.

“It’s a pleasure to do business with you.”
 
A Sample of Events from 2001

President Gore secures the passage of a minimum wage increase and ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, but his remaining legislative agenda is hampered by a soft economy, for which Republicans blame the energy tax used to enforce the Kyoto protocol.

FBI agent Robert Hanssen is arrested and charged with spying for Russia for 25 years.

Former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia President Slobodan Milošević surrenders to police special forces, to be tried on charges of war crimes.

The second intifada breaks out in Israel and the Palestinian territories, drawing in suicide bombers from across the Muslim world.

Enron files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection 5 days after Dynegy cancels a US$8.4 billion buyout bid (to this point, the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history). Media commentators are swift to blame the energy tax, although it turns out that the company had been engaged in widespread accounting fraud for some time.

The People's Republic of China joins the World Trade Organization.

A series of letters laced with anthrax are mailed to several news media offices and two Democratic U.S. Senators (Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy), killing 5 people and infecting 17 others. The perpetrator is never identified, although the FBI investigation eventually focuses on Bruce Ivins, a scientist at Fort Detrick who commits suicide before any charges can be filed.
 
September 11, 2001

Normally, Tuesdays were PE days, and therefore Cody White’s favorite day of the week, but once a month the boys and girls split up and had to sit through a boring lesson about ‘health.’ Last year, the lessons had all been about the parts of your body, including the parts that made girls different from boys. This year, according to Matt, they would be discussing the fun things you could do with those parts, and why you shouldn’t do them.

Cody’s Mom had recruited one of the young doctors from the hospital where she worked (she called them ‘residents,’ which Cody assumed meant that they lived at the hospital), to do the lesson. He stood in front of the board and nervously addressed the class.

“Hello, kids. My name is Dr. McCarty, and I’ve volunteered to come and teach your health class. This year we’ll be discussing human sexuality. Now, um, who can tell me what ‘sexuality’ means?”

Ethan Clark, the class clown, raised his hand and provided a definition that was sufficiently crude to momentarily fluster Dr. McCarty and provoke a wave of giggles from the class.

Dr. McCarty blinked several times very rapidly before he recovered. “Yes, that’s one way to put it. Another way might be: “the way people express themselves sexually.”

Dr. McCarty turned around to write the definition on the chalkboard, which gave Cody an opportunity to catch his best friend Justin’s attention and mime ‘the way people express themselves sexually’ using a gesture Matt had taught him. Cindy Abbott saw him too, and started giggling, but Justin shushed her before she could get them in trouble.

Cody turned back to face the front as Dr. McCarty explained the difference between gay people and straight people and bisexual people which gradually devolved into a nervous discussion of social construction and the teachings of many religious traditions. By the time Mrs. Neal rescued Dr. McCarty with the announcement that it was time for recess, Cody was thoroughly confused.

He quickly forgot his confusion, and everything Dr. McCarty had tried to teach him, once he got outside. It was one of the last warm days of summer, and Cody knew he had to maximize his playing time before the rainy weather set in.

After school, Cody went over to Justin’s Dad’s house. Mr. Gilmore lived on the water, and let the kids swim off his dock. Cody knew he had to head home when the streetlights came on.

He ran upstairs and rushed through his homework before dinner so that his mom would let him watch TV after.

As was customary, Cody’s mom asked everyone at the dinner table what had happened that day.

“Nothin’” Matt shrugged.

“We did sex ed.” Cody announced. He knew that his mother would find out about it from Dr. McCarty regardless of whether he told her or not.

“What did you learn?”

Cody thought for a moment. He hadn’t actually learned anything new, between what he already knew of the subject and Dr. McCarty’s less than memorable instruction.

“Nothin’”

“Well, I guess it’s been a pretty boring day for everybody, then.”
 
A Sample of Events from 2002

President Gore signs an economic stimulus bill in response to the recession.

Seeking to rebalance the budget, President Gore signs a farm bill which cuts overall spending and shifts the remaining spending from grain subsidies to conservation.

President Gore signs the Family Life Education Act, which provides funding for research-based holistic sex education and increased access to contraceptives. The law becomes controversial after reports of curricula which encourage masturbation and homosexual behavior as birth control techniques.

In the wake of the Enron accounting scandal, President Gore calls for increased regulation of corporate accounting practices.

Following American threats of military action, UN weapons inspectors return to Iraq.

A survey finds that 85 percent of high school students report ever having consumed alcohol, with 52 percent reporting drinking at least monthly and 73 percent supporting a reduction in the drinking age

Republicans take control of the House of Representatives and the Senate for the first time in decades, with the Reform Party taking an all-time high of 37 seats. Roy Blunt of Missouri is elected House Speaker.
 
A Sample of Events from 2004

The 2004 Summer Olympics are held in Cape Town, South Africa.

Suicide bombers detonate two bombs at the Red Sea resort of Taba, Egypt, killing 34 people and injuring 171, mostly Israeli tourists.

Arizona Senator John McCain is elected President, gaining a large share of the growing Hispanic vote through his repudiation of Governor Wilson’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. Experts agree that President Gore’s reelection campaign is doomed by his inability to pass major legislation and the ongoing softness of the economy, as well as Reform Party candidate Jesse Ventura’s unusually strong performance in the Rust Belt.

Taipei 101, at the time the tallest skyscraper in the world, standing at a height of 1,670 feet (510 m), officially opens.
 
January, 2006

Shane was really going to this campaign rally to be polite to Ronnie, his high school boyfriend. Every time he saw Shane, Ronnie complained about the corrupt politicians funneling off the Federal money that was supposed to be going to the inner-city school Ronnie taught at. And every time he saw Ronnie, Shane patiently explained that there was nothing you could do about the machine, you just had to make your peace with them. Of course, Ronnie would come back at Shane with an enthusiastic description of whatever do-good reformer had been selected to tilt at the windmills this year.

For 2006, the man from La Mancha was a Mikva protégé who’d managed to get a campaign finance bill passed back in ’97 and, unusually for this wing of the party, was actually a pretty good speaker. He started his speech with a recitation of Blago’s ethics troubles. Clearly, he was banking on an indictment before primary day.

“Folks, this isn’t just about one man. This is about a culture of corruption running from Chicago to Springfield, and all the way to Washington DC. This is about a swamp of lobbyists and special interests. Today it’s time to put the interests of the people first. It’s time to drain the swamp in Springfield.”

The crowd started chanting. “Drain the swamp! Drain the swamp!”

Shane wondered if Ronnie might really be on to something this time.
 
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