One Hit Wonders

"One Hit Wonders" is a euphemism for musical acts that made history with just one song. What's unique about these acts is they grabbed national and even international attention for one hit song or contrivance and never duplicated that success again. While these acts were reveling in their glory neither they nor anyone else had any idea that they were not only experiencing the beginning but they were also the witnessing the end of their success. Their artifice or stratagem was here today, gone tomorrow yet totally unforgettable. What's interesting is how many times this same "One Hit Wonder" phenomenon has played out in human history.

On June 25, 1876 George Armstrong Custer and the 265 men under his command lost their lives in the Battle of Little Big Horn, often referred to as Custer's Last Stand. Quickly encircled by their enemy, the five companies under Custer's immediate command were slaughtered in less than an hour. After the battle, the Indians came through and stripped the bodies and mutilated all the uniformed soldiers. The Battle of the Little Bighorn was the pinnacle of the Native Americans' power. A stunning but short-lived victory, the Battle of Little Big Horn galvanized public opinion against the Native Americans. To that point in time the Eastern press and public had some empathy for the Native Americans and their plight. However after the slaughter was reported the public, outraged over the death of a decorated Civil War general, demanded and received harsh retribution. Even though the Native Americans had achieved their greatest victory their tenuous union fell apart in the face of the white onslaught. Federal troops poured into the Black Hills and Sitting Bull was forced to seek refuge in Canada. Four years later, with his supporters on the brink of starvation, Sitting Bull returned to the U.S. and a harsh life at the Standing Rock reservation.

On December 7, 1941 the Japanese attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor killing 2,403 persons, destroying 188 airplanes, and damaging or sinking twenty-one ships. The Japanese plan was to immobilize the U.S. fleet at the outset of the war with a surprise attack. While the Japanese success was overwhelming it was not complete. The Japanese had failed to damage the American aircraft carriers that were absent from the harbor. American technological skill raised and repaired all but three of the ships sunk or damaged at Pearl Harbor. On June 4-7, 1942 at the Battle of Midway the U.S. Navy inflicted a smashing defeat on the Japanese Navy. The Japanese lost four irreplaceable aircraft carriers, that had participated in the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the strategic advantaged they had gained as a result of the attack on Pearl Harbor. After the Battle of Midway the U.S. took the offensive in the Pacific.

On August 15, 1969 the Woodstock Music and Art Fair drew more than 500,000 people to a pasture in New York State. For four days, the site became a counter-cultural mini-nation in which minds were open, drugs were all but legal and love was "free". Woodstock has become part of the cultural lexicon. Arnold Skolnick, the artist who designed Woodstock's dove-and-guitar symbol, described it this way: "Something was tapped, a nerve, in this country. And everybody just came." Young people felt they had discovered the cure for all the world's ills through sharing, helping, consideration, and respect. Thousands left the Woodstock event believing the world had changed. What those happy hippies didn't realize was Woodstock was the last act in the halcyon era of hippie love. On December 6, 1969 the Altamont concert turned into one of the most violent days in rock and roll history.

On September 11, 2001 nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airplanes and slammed one into each of the World Trade Towers and another into the Pentagon. It was Osama bin Laden's and his terrorist organization Al Qaeda's greatest triumph. While supporters of bin Laden's terrorism were dancing in the streets they failed to realize they were celebrating the end of bin Laden and his organization. If bin Laden is alive, which is very questionable given he's on the run and needs kidney dialysis treatments on a regular schedule, he's living an extremely marginal lifestyle in some remote and environmentally harsh corner of this world. What's left of his organization, those that survived, are scattered amongst friendly or at least sympathetic Islamic nations in the Middle East and Asia.

All these events constitute "One Hit Wonders." Each event was an incredible human achievement only made possible by a confluence of improbabilities and the key ingredients: uniqueness and surprise. None of these events were repeatable because the innumerable opportunities necessary for each event's success would never exist again. A testament to this fact is Flight 93. While the other three hijacked planes hit their intended targets Flight 93 didn't because the passengers on board knew from phoning their relatives that commercial airliners had hit the World Trade Towers. Tom Burnett phoned his wife from Flight 93 and told her he was going to die, but he wasn't going quietly. The passengers on the first three flights did not fight back because for all the hijackings over the past four decades not one had been flown into a building. The passengers on the first three flights figured the hijackers were going to fly to some foreign country and then make some demands. However the passengers of Flight 93 knew the uniqueness of the hijacker's enterprise before the flight had reached its target. The passengers on Flight 93 fought back thereby bringing the plane down.

Trampling on your civil rights, spying on your every move, disempowering unions, amassing heretofore unheard powers under the sole jurisdiction of the Executive Branch via the Department of Homeland Security http://www.whitehouse.gov/homeland, and using 9-11 as mandate for regime change will not make you any safer because Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda are a pitiful remnant of their former selves and will never constitute the threat they once were. A terrorist attack in the United States the size of 9-11, carried out incredibly by only nineteen men with airline tickets and box cutters, is not repeatable. We've all been sensitized to the dangers and the key elements of uniqueness and surprise are gone. What you have to decide is if you're willing to let the Federal Government intrude on every aspect of your personal and professional life, and conduct preemptive wars of imperialistic expansion in your name because Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda had their "One Hit" at infamy.