Much Ado about Naught

The esteemed David Segal of the esteemier NY Times recently kicked off a tsunami of chatter when declaring open season on naming this current about-to-pass "decade":
 
"You know the rules − coin a pithy, reductive phrase that somehow encapsulates the multitude of events, trends, triumphs and calamities of the past 10 years."
 
Full text here .
 
Although the Capital Cabal was triumphantly created from whole cloth in 2002, we can see how one might focus more on the calamities to describe the era. One of the pithier phrases proffered is the "Uh-Ohs", since it does seem to encapsulate, in two quick guttural utterances, the steady stream of "whoops" that has resulted. And indeed, brevity is the soul of wit − and lingerie (never surrender, Dorothy ).
 
However, in the pre-dawn hours when thoughts rage through the pile of one's obligations, responsibilities and affronts, there sometimes comes a moment of "uh-oh-ah-ha" clarity that should be shared, and thus we offer:
 
The Ought Naughts .
 
Since "ought" is homphonic to "aught", or "zero", and "naught" is also another word for "zero", it seems that we literally and relatively cover the numbers.
 
And it seems to hold up in practice, to wit.: we really ought naught have had to deal with all the calamities of these past years, or we really ought naught feel victimized by said calamities, since they were utterly of our own making. While "Uh-Oh" is indeed short and sweet, it is inherently a passive observational utterance delivered when, say, one witnesses a levy breaking. Ought Naught implies an action and/or responsibility, as in "we ought naught have delayed maintenance of the levy in the first place."
 
Other examples abound, as we ought naught have believed in Iraqi WMD, we ought naught have cheered on a wholly unsustainable housing bubble, and so forth. Take your pick.

What soon followed the "ought naught" revelation was the obligatory Great Google Search to see where and how these two words might have already been paired, and the only result of note was a passing reference penned by esteemiest William Safire, in all his etymological glory. Seems that "ought naught" got a brief pairing in an article titled, of all things, "Name That Decade."
 
Written in 1989 .
 
When one creates such a huge literary legacy as Mr. Safire ( RIP, sweet Prince ) then maybe it's not so strange that he be this inadvertently prescient (see paragraph 10). After all, 1989 saw the publishing of Salman Rushdie"s The Satanic Verses  (with its consequent fall-out), the fall of the Berlin Wall, two years previous the stock market crashed, the U.S. invaded Panama to depose a pesky dictator, and the Anchorage Daily News won a Pulitzer.
 
Spooky. Credit should be given even when it's only tangentially due.
 
Absent any other revelations, however, we claim the mantle of The Ought Naughts  and willingly shoulder the responsibility of promoting its ubiquitous recognition as being sufficiently pithy, reductive and encapsulating not only of an era, but as a reminder of our responsibilities. As in, we ought naught despair of our calamities, we ought take responsibility systematically encapsulating our troubles down to manageable verses.
 
And and as we bid farewell to The Ought Naughts , we really ought naught dwell on these types of encapsulating exercises again until 2019 , when it"s clear that we will have plenty to discuss.