The end of this week – Friday, July 1 –marks the midpoint of the middle year in our still-unnamed decade. The first years of every decade naturally bleed over from the last, but by now we should have a clearer sense of who we are, the distinguishing characteristics of the first decade of the 21st century.

The most obvious point is that this decade and century began not on January 1, 2000, but on September 11, 2001. The attacks have defined our times, abruptly beginning the shift in perspective and reality that distinguish this decade from the last. Terrorism was a known threat before, but words like “homeland security” and the presence of daily attempts at deterrents, which affect everything from airport lines to building security, did not exist. The United States was not committed to an international war on terror, which has brought us two foreign ground wars in three years. The festering “Clash of Civilizations” that Samuel Huntington warned of more than a decade ago is not academic theory but day-to-day geopolitical reality for the time being.

But while the war on terror occupies much daily and psychic space, it does not dominate all elements of our daily lives. Decades are defined by domestic events and cultural trends; the ’70s were not just Watergate and Jimmy Carter, but the perhaps more enduring effects of Led Zeppelin, disco, and divorce.

This weekend in New York City offered a snapshot of the fault lines in our contemporary democratic culture – on one side of town, at the former World’s Fair site in Queens, the 86-year-old Reverend Billy Graham presided over his last evangelical “crusade,” while in Manhattan, gays and lesbians marched down Fifth Avenue in their annual Pride Parade. America has always been torn between Saturday night and Sunday morning, but never has the conflict between the puritanical and the pornographic been more public or stark.

The influence of evangelicals in American politics and culture has never been greater, led by the example of a once hard-partying president who became “born-again” after a conversation with Billy Graham. On the other hand, it is estimated that Americans spend $10 billion – that’s with a “b” – on pornography each year. These dueling facts are indicative of a certain cultural split personality in the country that is also reflected in our divided politics today. The voting patterns of Democrats and Republicans in Congress are more polarized than at any time in the last 50 years; the political debate is ideologically driven and increasingly uncivil. Campaign strategies follow a divide-to-conquer method in which extremes on both sides empower the other. For example, in this decade, gay marriage was championed by some folks on the far left, which in turn was used far more effectively as a wedge issue by conservatives to consolidate power in the 2004 elections. Here, as well as in the war on terror, the tone of the times seems to be that “you are either with us or against us.”

The growing religiosity and apparently increasing conservatism of the country is not surprising, when you consider that each recent decade’s character has been shaped by the developmental stages of the baby-boom generation. The childlike innocence of the 1950s, the adolescent rebellion of the 1960s, the drift of the 1970s, the yuppie ambition of the 1980s, the mid-life crisis-driven scandals and stock-portfolio fascinations of the 1990s. Now the baby boomers are on the verge of retirement and trends have led to an unprecedented real estate boom, televised poker, and smoking bans. The rest of the decade seems sure to be shaped by the financial pressures of an aging population’s health care and pension costs bearing down on families, governments, and corporations alike.

The most critically acclaimed television shows of the decade so far – “The West Wing” and “The Sopranos” – concern aging authority figures trying to hold on to power in a changing world. The mainstreaming of technology has reached all ages, cell-phones are ubiquitous, and grandparents are surfing the Internet and e-mailing family members. But even in this arena there have been decade-specific innovations – “Google” has become a verb, blog is a noun, and the iPod has revolutionized the way music is consumed. U2 has taken the title of the World’s Greatest Rock Band from the Rolling Stones, while younger musicians like Eminem, OutKast, The White Stripes, and Coldplay help define the airwaves for the digital generation, as musical genres continue to become conflated. The popular phenomenon of reality television is a surreal symptom of a culture in which celebrity is a goal in itself. Between the Michael Jackson trial and Madonna’s budding crusade for sexual responsibility, the absurd is now so routine that the only rational response has been the resurgence in satire, practiced to great effect by “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart, “South Park,” and The Onion. Humor can still call out society’s excesses in a time when whiplash from the 24-hour news cycle makes sober analysis seem somehow inadequate.

Midway through the decade, we are still too close to judge ourselves with proper perspective, but these signifiers will help define our times. Five years along, we can’t even agree on a name for the decade: “the oughts” seems too stilted, “the zeros” is too nihilistic, while briefly fashionable suggestions like “the naughties” feel far too glib after the decade defining violence of September 11. The growing pains of globalization portend continued conflicts in the coming years that will define us further. But as we move further from the myopia of the “me” decades, we find ourselves deeper into the “us against them” era at the turn of this new century and millennium.