Today's commentary is brought to you by the word "prescient".
Adjective.
Having or showing knowledge of events before they take place.
And today's shout out for "Best Prescience From An Unlikely Source"...
...goes to a satirist, social critic, essayist and author who, resume' wise, knew from nothing about politics, sociology or the geopolitical perspective as it relates to the nations sharing breathing room on planet Earth.
Still, he knew exactly where we were going to end up at this very moment in the timeline. And he shared it with us, satirically, over fifty years ago.
And, oh, yeah, has been dead about eleven years now.
Who, when and what he professed presciently to be pondered promptly.
Here's a little something to get your blood pressure up to speed on another workaday world page of your life story.
A new U.S. intelligence report warns that both China and Russia are investing in weaponry that could attack U.S. satellites and assets in space and that both nations are now actively preparing to be capable of using space as a battlefield.
Well now, that probably knocks your annoyance at the ol' Interstate gridlock down a notch or two on the list of things that matter a hoot in hell today, wouldn't you think?
The details of which of our adversaries (or, of course, bestest buddies in the whole gol darn, golly gosh world, if you're still plopping that red cap on your head as you race out the door to the love me, need me, adore me rallies)...the details of who's designing this and building that and funding this and that are readily and easily available online.
And not just from the tin foil hat, Obama was born in Pongo Pongo, dammit, Hannity, Hannity, he's our man, club, either.
We're talking reputable, mainstream media organizations.
What we of the boomer generation still nostalgically refer to as "the news".
You know, the ones Donald whines "fake news" at as he bangs his Binky against the podium at the love me, need me, praise me, adore me rallies.
So, I'll spare you the details here. And just give you credit for being able to find the necessary information yourself.
Helpful hint: just Google "uh-oh..."
By way of offering a little context, meanwhile, let me share some history with you. Again, for those of us of the boomer generation, and prior, we take our history with a splash of Deja Vu.
Cause, cue, David, Stephen, Graham and Neil......
...we have all, it turns out, actually been here before.
In 1957, the world's first artificial satellite was launched and began orbiting the Earth.
It orbited the Earth for three weeks, until its batteries died. It then orbited silently for two additional months before falling back into the atmosphere.
It was the size of a large beach ball. And cost about 70 million bucks in today's dollars.
It was not a weapon. Not even a communicative device per se'. Given the times and the primitive state of space exploration in 1957, it was, of course, in 1957 a history making phenomenon but, in the perspective of 2019 technology, it was little more than a two hundred pound AM radio broadcasting a beep back to the planet's surface.
The smart phone you probably have in your hand or in your immediate proximity does a whole lot more. And weighs a whole lot less. And probably costs less. Well, depending on your data plan.
And unless you're a space geek and/or you've peeked ahead because you're one of those people who just can't stand not knowing everything ahead of everybody else, the satellite was named.
Sputnik.
No, it was not Klingon. Or Romulan. Or even Cardassian.
Cardassian, not Kardashian. Try not to splash Kim, Khloe or Kourtney all over things for a change.
It was funded, designed, built, launched and orbited by...well, go figure....one of our adversaries.
Or best buddies if, you know, red cap, love me, praise me, yada yada.
The Union Of Soviet Socialist Republic.
Better known to the current culture, most especially on those bumper stickers plastered on the cars of pretty much all the White House advisers....
Russia.
Three weeks of orbiting pings and two months of silently circling the globe didn't exactly shake our windows or rattle our walls...literally.....but, symbolically.....it was a game changer, baby.
The long assumed superiority of America as the leader of pretty much everything was gone like a flash of re-entry. The balance of power, if only emotionally, suddenly shifted away from the US of A and back towards the U.S.S, back to the U.S.S, back towards the U.S.S.R.
And it might seem silly, even, again, primitive, given our modern terabyte world, but it was a scary time. Because our enemy (and, unlike today, everybody, including the guy in the White House, was in agreement that they were our enemy)..our enemy now had the literal means to rain down on us whatever they chose to rain down on us. And we were in no position to either block that rain....or do our own version of the downpour.
Sure, we had nuclear missiles in 1957. Indoor plumbing and even frozen dinners, too, wisenheimer millennial. But the time between launch of our missiles and their arrival in Moscow, for example, was in the late fifties, in the neighborhood of twenty minutes. A lot less time than it would have taken for Russia to plop a big one on us from right over our flag waving, arrogant little heads.
The result of that scare was that Eisenhower, and then Kennedy after him, got busy gettin' busy bringing America up to speed, celestially speaking, launching what came to be known as the "space race" and within a few years, we had not only caught up and, once again, ahead of the Russians in the satellite department, we became the first nation on planet Earth to send, and safely return, living breathing humans to the Moon.
The same moon, by the way, that, back in 1957, Lyndon Johnson was referring to when he said America had to start kicking some Commie satellite ass, lest we, we being America, "go to bed by the light of a Red moon".
Now, news that Russia is once again misbehaving up, up and away, not to mention China has decided to get a little ground control to Major Tom on us, should put anyone with half a brain, a fragment of foresight and/or a viddy bit of vision into serious time to get busy gettin' busy on the final frontier front.
Well, damn, there I had to go and put those pesky conditions on it like ...half a brain... and foresight...and vision.
Cause we ain't got time for no stinkin' foresight, man. We are the America of 2019. The America of Donald and His Great Again Orchestra.
And there's no room for technological chess on the to-do list of those charged with keeping us safe from all enemies, foreign and domestic (and, while we're at it, of course, let's update that to include galactic), not to mention a whole big slice of the general population, America 2019 is racked up, stacked up and backed up with the really important issues of the day.
Getting those coal mines open again.
Trying to decide whether six months is long enough to wait between giving the rich and indifferent another tax cut that parties them hearty and pretty much fucks everybody else heartily.
Watching evangelicals and assorted other wing nuts scrambling all Chicken Little-ish around the barnyard squawking about that Muslim Congresswoman and how she is single handed-ly going to start the fire that will burn the words Allahu Akbar into every single place in America that words can be burned.
Hand wringing, flag waving, pissin' and moanin about a 30 year old Hispanic from New York who stumbles, misspeaks, sounds as naive' sometimes as Jimmy Stewart in a pants suit, but who has, in just one month, already shown more love of country and determination to do the right thing than Donald J. and his jolly morons have offered up since the day any of them were born.
While, in the background, you can hear the tap, tap, tap of construction coming from the starry night sky above us. And the muffled conversation of construction workers working. The accents...what are those accents....oh....right....Russian.....and Chinese.
Yes, I know they're not actually building anything. It's a metaphor. Take off that ridiculous goddamn red cap and let the blood start flowing to your frontal lobes again.
Well, hold on, there, libtard snoflake, you counter articulately. What about our president gittin' er done and making America great again by puttin' together that there (insert major echo for effect here) SPACE FORCE!!
Really?
No, I mean it. Really?
I tell ya, Luther. Your boy there doesn't have the "art of the deal" skills to get a simple concrete wall built.
And you're counting on him wheelin' and dealin' you out of the Death Star's line of fire?
The force is so not strong within you, Bubba.
Meanwhile, back on Earth.
Governing, especially at the global level, is chess.
And great chess players, great being defined as those who actually win matches, understand that the key to chess success is in ,first, seeing several moves ahead and, second, recognizing the weaknesses on display by the opponent and exploiting those weaknesses.
You guys still red capping and Trump clapping aren't at all like those stereotype doofuses in those Farmers Only dot com commercials. Because, as opposed to city folk, it's you who just don't get it.
Donald couldn't see several moves ahead if Fox and Friends broadcast it for him and used closed captioning to make it easier.
And Russia, and China (and, truth be told, my eight year old granddaughter) are so far out in front of him on the "recognizing an opponent's weakness" dealio, that they probably aren't even sweatin' that mainstream American media is publicly publishing that they are moving quickly and efficiently toward moving ahead of us in space.
Again.
Only this time, it's not about who first takes one small step for man. Or one giant leap for mankind.
It's about who gets to be the Empire.
And who has to realize, too late, that they don't have the means to strike back.
Prescient.
Having or showing knowledge of events before they take place.
A satirist, social critic, essayist and author was prescient as all giddyup over fifty years ago.
And although it really doesn't do him justice, he was also renowned as a "stand-up" comedian.
Who saw Donald Trump and his unparalleled inability to play chess coming light years away.
George Carlin.
"...well, I see a line of thundershowers on the radar......but, I also see a flight of Russian ICBM missiles....so, I wouldn't sweat the thundershowers, too much..."
May God be with us.
Because, from what we're hearing, it may already be too late to count on the Force.
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