Remember when bumper stickers read
Free Tibet or End Apartheid, and we agreed?

Remember when there was just one war on TV,
like a movie whose plot you knew by heart?

Remember when the president was a crook we
all poked fun at, and we mouthed the right words
when tragedy struck, and nothing changed?

Remember when smog was the price of freedom?
Remember 9/11, freedom fries, War for Oil?
Remember paperboys, and newspapers wrapped

in wet plastic, and turning off the evening news?
Remember when planes had a smoking
section? When erudition was good, and debates

mattered, and a gaffe could decide an election?
Remember when we were the good guys?

Remember love letters, and losing touch with
old friends? Remember pay phones, and cell phones
with pull-out antennae, green-screened computers,

the Mine Ban Treaty, Minesweeper, dial-up modems—
when social media toppled dictators? Do you remember
a post-racial America clapping itself on the back?

Those too were terrible times.