The Buddha says not to dwell on the past, or dream of the future, but concentrate on the moment. Or maybe that was Dr. Oz. Either way, I don’t like to look back at the 2000s, when I can help it, because my memories of the first decade of the 21st century are all tied up with George W. Bush.

The 21st century? It was like moving into a brand-new dream house and spending the first night searching for the source of some terrible smell. And then finding Leatherface in the basement, making furniture out of hitchhikers. We’re always afraid of the wrong thing. We entered the century afraid that a computer glitch would ruin our economy and our defenses and plunge us into chaos. Little did we know. The real Y2K threat was a privileged Texas dry drunk with a mean streak, a staggering lack of intellectual curiosity, and a Lennie-and-George relationship with something called Dick Cheney.

On the bright side, God called Dick Cheney home. Unfortunately, he refused to go.

One of the great things about Obama’s taking over in 2009 was that he was so very different, I immediately forgot about Bush—he was like an uncle who molested me and I blocked it out.

Fortunately, I made some notes. When Bush entered office, there was a surplus. A year later, the budget fell to a deficit of $158 billion; when he left, the na- tional debt had nearly doubled. We got bogged down in two wars on either side of Iran and we probably passed the tipping point on climate change. We lost two towers, the Pentagon was reduced to a tetragon, and New Orleans sank. Forget income inequality—in 2008 we almost lost the banking system. We almost lost General Motors. The NASDAQ lost 48 percent of its value.

I don’t want to sound like an old hippie who you just got going on Nixon, but those aren’t just bad numbers; those are Nero numbers—Baby Doc, Robert Mugabe, Louis XVI numbers.

I try to look back on the 2000s and think about all the fun we had with Kevin Federline and LOLCats, but I keep coming back to this one guy.

We lost the Western black rhinoceros. I can’t blame Bush for that directly, but he didn’t help. Also Darfur and the 2004 tsunami—not just Bush.

And I can’t say the 2000s were all bad.

We got Daniel Craig as Bond; that was an upgrade. And the Prius and movie screenings that don’t admit kids. And almost a woman president.

We got Sully Sullenberger and YouTube and the euro and “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).”

I guess Internet sex tapes put celebrity-sleuth magazines out of business, but that’s the free market. Creative destruction. John Henry and the jackhammer—nothing you can do. The iTunes gift card replaced the muffin basket as the present for people who had no place in your heart; other Apple products replaced everything else.

Weapons of mass destruction turned out to be a lie, but noise-canceling headphones really work.

Michael Jackson died, but at least he lived to see the first four Harry Potter movies, before Daniel Radcliffe lost his looks.

Gregory Peck died. Unless he didn’t—I’ll check Wikipedia.

We lost Enron and Elián Gonzalez, and Pluto’s not a planet anymore, but we got Wikipedia.

We got medical marijuana and married gay people in the states that weren’t stupid, and we replaced simply not listening to people with not listening while checking our texts.

We lost the baiji dolphin, which was beautiful. But we also lost the European land leech, which was, to be frank, kind of a land leech.