Yes. I have a sense of waiting here as well.
Several years ago I took my aunt to visit some friends that she had known for years and gone traveling with. They were a couple in their 80s, but vigorous and sharp. They had been married for 60 years and had gone to Europe for a Church World Youth Convocation in 1939. I asked them if they had had a sense of the immanence of war at that time. They said that everywhere they went in England, Holland, and Denmark, that people had a sense that the other shoe was about to drop.
In my lifetime, I haven't felt the underlying unsettleness of the center not holding as it has since 9-11. The enemies of the settled governed world are seeing their chance and we are in for a fearsome ride.
I've felt it my entire life, but the feeling is much stronger since 9/11. I don't think anyone really wants there to be a nuclear exchange, not even the Indians and Pakistanis, but, as in WWI and to a lesser degree WWII, human nature is winning against human reason: greed, fear, and hate are overwhelming common sense. People in places like India and Pakistan are rationalizing their actions in unreasonable ways, much as I imagine Japan did before attacking the US.
This sort of thing is *very* dangerous, and unless someone can make an emotional appeal strong enough to counteract the rampaging and deep-seated dark emotions that are floating around, eventually the other shoe *will* drop, and, as with WWI, no one can say what the result will be, except that it will be horrible.
Tuor the Pessimist