Frontier.
It's an exciting word, isn't it?
Conjuring up visions of exploration and discovery, high mountains and deep seas, endless galaxies and stunning horizons, navigating uncharted, possibly perilous, paths to new worlds of opportunity and hope.
Names that move us, motivate us, inspire us.
Columbus.
Magellan.
Lewis and Clark.
Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins.
At the same time, a word painting a more recognizable, traditional portrait in our minds, of an untamed land, a wild, lawless region where one survives by their wits and their instincts and, even, the skin of their teeth.
Earp.
Holiday.
Clanton.
Hickok.
The dictionary refines the definition.
A line or border separating two countries.
The extreme limit of settled land beyond which lies wilderness.
Yeah...definition refined but not nearly as romantic.
Because, let's fess up to one another, wanna? Exploration is sexy. Risking life and limb to reach for the highest or seek out the deepest is, at the very least, a buzz of immeasurable proportion. And, at its best, it is that quality in human nature that fuels our desire, even need, to go around the next bend, climb up the next mountain, cross the next ocean.
Except we've already pretty much gone around every bend, crossed every ocean, climbed every mountain.
And, one assumes, if only inevitably, forded every stream.
That leaves us only one place to go.
Space....the.....wait for it.
...Final.... Frontier.
And, from the folks who brought you "The Wall!" "The Middle Class Tax Revolution!" and "Healthcare, The Best Healthcare, Really Terrific Healthcare!".......the must see production of the forthcoming election season.....
Space Force.
Did a piece recently in which I mentioned that, at any given time, four out of ten people steadfastly hang in there with their approval of the Trump "presidency".
Here's an American demographic that, bet the bankrupt casino, baby, is 100 % down with thanking God every day for the election of Donald John Trump.
Late night comedy writers.
The folks who create the one liners and six or seven minutes of monologue heard on late night talk shows each late night have had to do, pretty much, one and only one thing each working day since January of 2017.
Show up.
The show is already pretty much written before they clock in.
And, as our beloved Roseanne Roseannadanna used to wisely offer.
"It's always something."
In Trump's case, daily to be sure. Sometimes even hourly.
At this writing, the numero uno topic du jour is Space Force.
Here's a couple of down to Earth thoughts about this Force that Donald wants to be with us.
First, there's a case to be made that, given that it's 2018, resuming our exploration of and/or our defense of space is a perfectly logical, practical, even visionary thing to do.
But Space Force has nothing to with exploration. Fact is space exploration, travel, etc has been in mothballs for awhile and the Republicans show as much sign of re-energizing that transporter beam as Angelina shows of romantically reconciling with Brad.
And of all the things that Donald Trump has been called, fair or not, truthful or not, it's easily provable that no one, that's n o, o n e, no one has ever risked being ridiculed for calling him a visionary.
Those of us, meanwhile, who grew up in the 1950's and 1960's remember the conventional wisdom of those times was that America needed to be first in space if, for no other reason, if we weren't, they would be. They, in that generation's vernacular, of course, referring to the Russians.
Younger folks need to note that this was at a place on the American History Timeline when Russia was considered an adversary and potential enemy and not today's best-est darn buddy a failed real estate hustler turned president of the United States could ever have.
Space Force, in its current incarnation, serves primarily three purposes.
It distracts, or, at least, attempts to distract from whatever revelations and/or accusations and/or criminal charges are coming from the guy Donald likely calls Darth Mueller.
It's retrorocket rhetoric intended to thrill the space cadets who gather together at the "I'm The President and That Makes Me Beloved So Get In Here And Make Me Feel Beloved" worship services and, at least, in theory, put the other nations of the Earth on notice that America is about to kick it up a notch, or a couple hundred nautical miles, when it comes to being Top Dog in the Dark Matter Dept.
Kylo Putin....meet Donald Golfcoursewalker.
Although the chances are more than pretty good that the other nations of the Earth will simply move America up a notch from Worldwide Laughing Stock to Interstellar Laughing Stock.
And, while it's all very galactically glamorous, supernova sexy and technologically titillating, Space Force is, at the end of the solar day, little more than busy work.
Reorganizing the office supplies as evidence of efficiency...spun subatomcially into G.I. Joe becomes Han Solo.
Never mind the obvious question.
If you can't even get 2000 miles of bricks laid along the Mexican border, how ya gonna fill the cosmos with mean and lean laser boys of Company B?
Not to mention getting Venus to pay for it.
If you're surprised, or even a little put off, by the fact that all of this sounds like satire drenched in sarcasm ......hey, welcome. Nice to have you along. So, you're a first timer with me, then, huh?
There are a number of very good reasons why America should, in fact, lift off where it left off and get back to gettin busy in the business of boosters.
Not the least among them being that tried and true, still true today, caveat that if we don't make it so, they will.
Ronald Reagan once called Russia the Evil Empire.
How totally George Lucas has that turned out to be?
At the same time, it's expected, and totally to be expected, that there will be resistance, even rebellion at the idea of spending, as Carl Sagan used to say, billions and billions (and billions and billions, adjusted for inflation since Sagan's days) on what promises to be a staggeringly complex, multi-layered, infinitely challenging undertaking while the American wheelhouse is occupied by a failed real estate hustler who thinks Nazis and White Supremacists are A-OK.....and the former U.S.S.R is, like, totally a BFF.
Put simply...
Right idea, right time.
Totally wrong guy.
History, or a little paraphrase of it, offers up what I think sums it up best.
John F. Kennedy threw the metaphorical American cap over the wall of space and, as the old anecdote concluded, we had no choice to but to follow it.
I lived during Jack Kennedy's 1000 days. I witnessed Jack Kennedy's vision of America in space.
Donald Trump...
You're no Jack Kennedy.
Stick to walls you can't get built and ducking accountability you can't hide from forever.
And leave our return to space to men...and women...of vision.
Intelligent life forms.
Traveling from the New Frontier......
...to the Final Frontier.
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