Why Superbowl 1991 was a marker for America’s decline
Historically, it isn’t wise to assume the good times will roll on ad infinitum.
“O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.”
Words from the American anthem and the version sung by Whitney Houston at the 1991 Superbowl is widely acclaimed as one of the very best renditions of all time. Please take a few minutes to watch it before continuing.
Rolling Stone said, “Still the gold standard for all Super Bowl performances more than 20 years later, Whitney Houston’s prerecorded version of the National Anthem stands as one of the most stunning moments in American sports history.”
I hadn’t realized just how powerful her performance was until I saw it in the awesome Clive Davis Biography on Netflix. If you love music then please watch it.
The thing that came to me while watching, and particularly watching Whitney sing, is that her performance was a metaphor for American power. It seemed to me that right then, as Whitney sang her heart out, it marked peak America and peak Whitney.
You can literally plot the start of America’s economic and political decline from that day, January 27th, 1991.
The US was at war with Iraq and it had entered the war to stop the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. At the Superbowl, the entire country tipped its hat to the brave men and women who serve in America’s armed forces.
An outcome post-Iraq war, part 1, was that one of the progenies of the war was the birth of vengeful terrorism that culminated, 10 years later, in the Sept 11 attacks, that helped prompt the second war with Iraq.
America did end the 20th century in apparently rude health. The stock market was booming, literally bursting at the seams with strong growth, yet around the corner, in the early 21st century, there would be a truly dramatic crash.
The Dotcom bubble burst and saw the Nasdaq index, which had risen five-fold between 1995 and 2000, tumble from a peak of 5,048.62 on March 10, 2000, to 1,139.90 on Oct 4, 2002, a 76.81% fall. By the end of 2001, most tech stocks had gone bust or at least the stocks that relied on Ad revenue had all gone away.
As America entered the 21st century it was seriously economically wounded by the Dotcom bust that had evaporated trillions of dollars of shareholder funds. By the end of the stock market downturn stocks had lost $5 trillion in market capitalization.
Then came 9/11 and soon after America was committed to another war in Iraq and the middle east, that up until 2020 has cost the nation $2trillion and the trailing costs, measured in billions, will continue for decades.
The financial crisis of 2007/8 was a major body-blow for the American people and the entire world. It arose through unbridled Wall St greed; insatiable greed, pure & simple. The rise in losses, the fear of further losses, and the liquidity pressures on the system pushed the price of financial assets down and added to concerns about the solvency of the US and global financial system.
A 2012 US Treasury report estimated that $19.2 trillion (2011 dollars) of household wealth was lost in the 2008 crash. Sadly most of the losses were born by average Americans with the richest 1% greatly increasing their wealth.
The first 20 years of this century has overall, been an economic and political disaster for America.
The 2016 ‘Make America Great’ campaign, while well-meaning, ushered an incoherent moron into the Whitehouse — exactly what America, and the world, didn’t need.
In the years leading up to the COVID crisis, the underlying performance of the U.S. economy had eroded in important ways.
There are many indicators to support my argument including erosion of real wages, falling unemployment of over 50s, rising inequality & household debt, divisive leadership pitting American against American, big employers moved manufacturing offshore, and finance was increasingly extended on the assumption of a continuation of good times.
But historically, it isn’t wise to assume the good times will roll on ad infinitum.
And here we are at the moment in time where a dagger is being inserted into the already damaged American heart. An America that is more divided than at any time since the Civil War. In many ways, the country now is at war with itself, thanks to the leadership (sic) of the Whitehouse.
The 21st century was billed as the great battle between the incumbent superpower, America, and the challenger, the People’s Republic of China.
China, it seems, has climbed up off the COVID-mat, while America appears down for the count. And I don’t for a minute discount that America could also get up off the mat.
Nor do I applaud the situation, because, I believe that the world needs a strong America that is cohesive and coherent, with a citizenry who are firmly bound as one to become strong again.
The great irony of COVID is that if China had tasked its secret service with the goal of finding how to put a dagger to America’s heart, they could have devised no more potent weapon than COVID-19.
The world does not celebrate America’s decline, far from it, we lament the demise of a 20th-century superpower that lost its way, primarily during the first 20 years of the 21st-century.
Noone who was at the 1991 Superbowl or who watched on TV that day, thought for one second that the singing of the anthem by Whitney Houston was a marker of anything other than the awesome beauty, energy, and power of their much-loved America.
As I watched Whitney sing The Star Spangled Banner on the Clive Davis biography, I too felt the emotion in her voice, saw the pride on the faces of the fans, and appreciated why Americans were so confident on that day in January 1991.
The next decade, the 2020s, will be incredibly hard for the entire world and it’s unlikely we’ll enjoy a rapid recovery towards what most of us think of as normal.
It could also be the decade that global power swings firmly towards a unified and proud China — what that might mean is intriguing and frightening.
I hope and pray that America can get up off the mat and once again demonstrate the kind of leadership needed to rebuild as a strong, resilient, and most importantly, a unified nation.
“And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!”
About the Author:
Greg Twemlow is a Sydney-based Social Enterprise Founder | Startup Mentor | CEO | Writer | Speaker | Founder of Consilio and Creativitee | Host of https://medium.com/consilio
