A Commentary by Doug Draper
I couldn’t help it one Friday morning earlier this July. Like millions of others, I had the tube turned on to watch the American shuttle Atlantis roar into space from NASA’s Cape Canaveral for the last time.
Last NASA shuttle launch
It was hard not to watch it without thinking that this last launch spells another stark end to a United States that dominated the world economically, technologically and culturally for much of the last century, and it took me back to a time when that space program and what it stood for still stood for a U.S. on the way up, not crashing down.
I remember being in Grade 2 or 3 in Welland in 1961 and 1962 when the first American astronauts, making up the then-fledgling Mercury 7, were launched, one after another, into space. The U.S., totally involved in a ‘Cold War’ with a Russia that was then the Soviet Union, wanted to prove its superiority in virtually everything by sending people into space after being stung by the Soviets sending up a satellite named Sputnik and a cosmonaut named Yari Gagarin, who became the first human to orbit this earth.
The U.S. had tried to fire up some unmanned rockets and they exploded into fireballs on the launch pad. But then in 1961, they put a former air force test pilot named Alan Shepard on the launch pad and there we were, we little kids in that Welland school (like millions of people around the world) following every minute of the launch on a radio and television in our class, even though it involved him only going up high enough to enter outer space and splashing down in the ocean were he and the capsule he rode in were picked up an hour or two later. The following year, we followed in equal anticipation when John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth.
Wow. It was all “so cool” as we would say as kids back in those heady days when it looked so much like the start of that song ‘On Broadway’, by a sixties pop group called ‘The Drifters’ – a song that began by giving the impression the streets of America were paved in gold and that there wasn’t much more than ‘magic in the air’. There was a young and charismatic president back then called John F. Kennedy who challenged the nation to put a person on the moon before the end of the decade, ‘not because it is the easy thing to do, but because it is hard.’
Wow again. As much as some of us may have been turned off by this all of this American bravado, I suspect there were just as many of us who were captivated by it and who secretly or not so secretly envied it. Whether the rest of the world liked it or not, the 20th century, going back to at least the Second World War, was ‘the American century’ and there seemed no end to it.
Except I think we may have seen one more in a series of recent sign of the end of it with the lift-off this past week of the last space shuttle at Cape Canaveral. After the launch, one of the American networks interviewed one of the country’s NASSA astronauts who is apparently going to have to count on the country renting him a seat on a Russian space craft next year to get him up to the space station both countries recently had a hand in building. I can just imagine President Kennedy twisting in his grave at that idea that the greatest years of this country may be over.
Think not? Just turn pick up any American newspaper or turn on n virtually any cable news channel– CNN, MSNBC or Fox News – broadcast out of the U.S., and once you get back ridiculous distractions like the Cindy Anthony murder trial, you will learn that the country has gone from having a budget surplus a decade ago to being hundreds of billions of dollars in debt. Much of it thanks to two costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and all of the other military operations the U.S. is maintaining around the world, and repeated tax cuts and subsidies to the wealthiest individuals and corporations, even while people at the lower end of the food chain have been losing their jobs and been forced to foreclose on their homes in many cases.
And nobody, including the richest of the rich, is willing to pay more taxes to bail the big American ship out, at least according to members of the Republican Party.
So now the country is on the verge of a catastrophic economic collapse, even by President Barack Obama’s admission, and all the politicians in Washington seem to want to do is play partisan war games.
It is a far cry from the country that boldly went to the moon and it should worry us all because if the U.S. goes down, we are all going to suffer.
(Share your comments on this post below.)
Niagara At Large 
The world is reverting to the dark ages (as if they ever truly left us) where there are ultra rich and ultra poor. At least then we knew who were nobility and who were peasants. Now we are deluded into thinking we are fighting in other lands for our rights and freedoms and those of our loved ones when it is really to enrich our masters. We are still peasants if we only realize it.
The US will go down the tubes like all other empires, and it is undeniably an empire, due to over extension of its military interference and emphasis on greed. The peasantry are placated with a few little bangles to keep them quiet and some entertainment not unlike that of the Roman arenas and gladiatorial combat.
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Sorry my computer would not let me finish – I believe there are still many with high ideals in the US and it has had some brief “Golden Ages” but I fear the pendulum has swung too far in the favour of corporate greed and the welfare of the common man/woman is now labelled anti Christian or socialist because it does not fit the agenda of the rich and powerful. If you are not patriotic you are a traitor. The culture, infrastructure, health and edcucation have been neglected as not important. Like Rome, it is rotting from within.
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How to prepare? Gold & canned goods.
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The real question Doug, is How to Prepare for the American default?
Can we avoid problems in Canada, or as Red Green says, “We’re all in it together,” and when their ship sinks, so will ours…?
It’s amazing how the Yanks forgot all of the good rules that were put into place after the 1929 Crash – intelligent controls over the 4 pillars of the economy: stocks, bonds, insurance & banks. Even more amazing – removing the controls began under President Reagan, and HE lived through the Crash and Great Depression. Let’s thank God that Finance Ministers Michael Wilson and Paul Martin were fiscal conservatives, and resisted world pressures to remove the controls in Canada, or we’d be in the same boat.
Let’s also give thanks that we have Parliamentary government, where the Prime Minister gets to pass -and live with the consequences of- his/her Budget. The US President never gets what he wants, as witnessed by the soon-to-fail? squabbling over how to change the course of the USA ship of state, and pay down their debt.
Let’s pray that they can get their act together. Otherwise, we may all be carrying pockets of gold … after all the world currencies collapse.
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“Like Rome, it is rotting from within.” Linda McKellar
The similarities between Rome and the U.S. are obvious and frightening. I think the question is, will the United States be able to avert and economical (and even environmental) catastrophe in time, or are they destined to let history repeat itself?
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My guess Daniel is, no, it will not be averted in time. Today with such global interdependence of economies, media, etc. there will be one mighty financial thud. Cracks are already showing in Greece and Spain and the political upheavals in north Africa and the Middle East. The wealthy own the politicians so there is no political will to break economic impasses and no concern for the have nots. The only good thing is that the have nots by far outnumber the haves if they ever wake up. The environmental degradation aspect is just as scary as the financial one as you mentioned. If the good people of the US and other countries would shed their complacency there might still be hope but with the decline in educational standards due to diversion of funds to “important” stuff I fear ignorance will allow a major collapse of the US and all world economies.
I fear
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As a contra comment, I will simply state that you all underestimate the American spirit and their ability to repeatedly pull together when circumstances demand it. They are nowhere near a meltdown. I fear more the growing influence of government in every aspect of my life in a sea of bureaucracy, incompetency and waste. God bless America and God bless Canada.
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A major reason for the impact of the recession being less in Canada was actually more government control i.e. greater regulation of banking institutions resulting in fewer mortgage defaults etc., lower (albeit an increase in) unemployment and generally better rebound thus far. We also still have a better educational system (although it too has been declining) and universal health care which are both rated very much higher than those of the US. I believe latest international stats show US health care in the area or 36th or 37th due to the uninsured and scholastic ranking for Canada in math, science and other subjects remains in the top 5 while the US is much lower. Nobody loses their home here due to medical bills. This is not a blanket condemnation but if the US did not overstretch itself with overseas interference, much of it unwanted, and put less emphasis on pleasing the military/industrial complex, the enormous wealth thus procurred could fix SO MANY of these problems. Unfortunately, I feel our current governments have been adopting the same paradigm with similar degradation in our way of life. Also, in this interdependent world it will be very difficult to not be swept away with other nations defaulting on their debts. As for God blessing anyone, I dislike that phrase due to its exclusion of all the other nations (and for other reasons).
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As an American I am bothered with the decision to end the shuttle program without a better “home made” alternative ready to go online. Even more troubling is that VERY REAL sense that the United States’s most serious problems, the one’s that could actually destroy our nation, are problems within it as opposed to external threats.
That being the case, despite the current negative situation, America’s future remains in the hands of Americans… and I can live with that!!!
As for the dealing with catastrophic environmental/economic/political issues on the global scale, I would look at what is currently happening in China and Japan with perhaps greater concern?
Maybe it’s the result of being the father of two wonderful children but I respectfully suggest that you are premature in your assessment that The United States is damned to imminent failure in the near future.
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All empires collapse eventually. Most do so from within. The USA is no different, other than time is speeding up, so it’s happening faster.
Oh sure, voters say, “Cut spending”. What you don’t hear them say is the qualifier:”Don’t cut my entitlements. Cut somebody else”s. That’s where you need to cut. Leave my entitlements alone.”
Tho perhaps not this year… default is inevitable.
I’m eagerly anticipating the day when the government cheques bounce and all those TSA, DEA, CIA, ATF, FBI, IRS, FDA, EPA, ICE, FTC, and other criminally minded alphabet soup agencies can no longer pay their thugs to harass innocent people.
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I recall being infuriated last year when the state of Texas approved a proposal to remove all ‘Liberal bias’ from the pages of its school textbooks. Not even those pictured on American currency were spared from this purge that sought to reclaim the past from the grips of ever-conspiring leftist historians and Liberal administrators. As young Texans re-learned history, Conservative pundits further suspicions of the Liberal media’s monopolizing of information, leaving only late-night comedians to defend. If one were to watch Fox News exclusively, the threat of ‘Liberal bias’ would certainly appear legitimate, but everyone else knows that there is no such thing as ‘Liberal bias,’ right?
In the collective memories of many, Liberal martyr John F. Kennedy presided over “the greatest years of this country,” a time period far different from now when “all the politicians in Washington seem to want to do is play partisan war games.” These statements, just like the Texans’ revisionism, are reflections of the complex relationship between memory, history, and politics shared by both the Liberals and Conservatives among us. We all find ourselves overwhelmed by a nostalgic fog that clouds historical judgment and, therefore, informs our understandings of the contemporary political landscape.
At the expense of historical accuracy, the Liberal memory has cemented Kennedy as an altruistic icon, against whom all successors must be judged. The surprising rise to power of this young, charismatic leader in the early 1960s understandably inspires sentimental feelings among those that experienced it; however, to long for its return disregards the long list of wrongs that were ultimately inherited by his historically-villainized successor. People continue to remember Kennedy in the same vein as the progressive youth of the later decade, forgetting that the unifying force that brought young resistors together was a war in Southeast Asia that Kennedy in fact escalated. The age appeared a time of great progress, but if partisanship seemed absent it was only due to the recent purge of the political Left and the establishment of the Center-Right model that plagues American politics today. For those that covet a return to peace and inclusive governance, 1960-63 should not be viewed as an appropriate model.
My point is not to condemn the Kennedy administration (again), but instead to draw attention to our subjective understandings of the past and present. While I disagree almost universally with all aspects of Conservatism and its revisionist propaganda machine, it is time to admit that nostalgia and partisanship equally shape the historical and contemporary understandings of Liberals as well. Whether it’s rewriting textbooks in Texas or embracing an idolized Kennedy, we must all be more conscious of that which informs our perspectives and the designed outcomes of our recollections.
If we cannot agree on what has happened already, how can we expect to agree on what should happen next?
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Once upon a time USA the stalwart defender of our way of life and the exciting place to be during the late 50s and early 1960s the heady years , a place where cars looked like batmobiles Elvis was king and Marilyn Monroe personified beauty and sex, then came the baby boomers Vietnam and OPEC, the American dream started fraying on the edges it appears that a mean spirit has taken over and the USA is a divided nation, The country has changed and lost it’s direction, Obama has had to deal with a huge manure pile left by the outgoing administration, I have most of my family living in the USA and hope the country can get it’s act together.
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Where’s the “Witnessing the British Empire Melting Down” (cheap national identity and in-group maintenance propaganda via the negation of falsely perceived “other”) story? http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/ http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/main/index.html http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/
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