One of these Days

"To the moon, Alice.  To the moon."  Ol' Jackie Gleason would say to his wife while brandishing a closed fist in the air above his head.  "To the moon."  Fifteen minutes after that he'd be apologizing to her for the latest outlandish mistake he had made.  The poor guy; he should have stuck to driving the bus. 

Five or six years later, John Kennedy was saying that to all of us.  "To the moon, America.  To the moon - by the end of this decade."  And ya know what?  We did it!  Well, we can't do it any more.  Last night I saw a shot of Jim Lovell in the crowd at the DC 4th of July celebration.  That picture of him reminded me of the ads from the 90's featuring Iron Eyes Cody with a tear in his eye as the trash is thrown from a moving car.

We've trashed our space program, and I'm certain Jim has shed a tear or two because of that.  One more flight, and the shuttle's gone.  Don't worry, we're replacing it with .... uh, let's see..........I know!  An Englishman with a great big smile and a pile of money to match!  He and Burt Rutan can handle the space program.  The American government has way more important stuff with which to deal.  Like........uh.......I know!  Fixing the budget.  Yeah - that's it.  Washington's gonna fix the budget.

They're gonna "reform" (repeat after me, reform equals gut) Social Security and Medicare.  Then call themselves heroes. 

But, first they're gonna fight over it and call everybody names till the whole nation is so tired of hearing about it we'll willingly allow the top 1% of the people to jet on down the road and ride Richard and Bert's E Ticket to space at $200,000 a pop.  Just so they can go to parties and tell their friends about it. 

 "Fer God's sake, I jus' wish them a-holes 'ud just shut the hell up.  Let me have a beer in peace.  It's a hun' red an' two degrees outside, and I've been workin' all day.  Martha, put the TV on the Simpson's.  I'm tired of these big wigs spoutin' crap" 

Forty years ago we were walking around on the moon - and today?  The US government can put people on the space station, a mere couple of hundred miles away, only one more time.  After that we have to thumb a ride from the Russians.  I thought we won the space race. 

One of these days, I guess I'm gonna have to wise up..  There's a bunch of stuff I must learn to deal with.  We lost the space race.  We lost the wars -  every one of them since WWII.  We lost the lead.  We lost the economy.  We lost our decency.  We lost our integrity.  We lost our way.

It seems Paul Simon had more insight than anyone else in our times.  Almost forty-five years ago it was he who first  realized we had gone astray and asked, "Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?  A nation turns it's lonely eyes to you. "