I stare out from my home in Southern Wisconsin, over the magnificent desolation of the United States of America. The moon landing, which occurred as I was standing at a huge television screen in Disneyland...my first outing from the hospital after becoming ambulatory from my wounds received in Vietnam, seemed to go a long way toward making up for a really lousy nineteen sixty-eight, and the few years rotten which had proceeded it. There was hope that hot July day. There was celebration. There were some damn good reasons to dig in and participate in my culture and in life itself. And what have we, just now, right out there beyond the panes of my window? I am living in the best financial time of my life. I have never been more successful. I am, in years, well advanced in wisdom, having made so many mistakes that I just had to learn from them or die. And here I am. What do I lack that I had when I was back in that amusement park, my wounds still seeping, my one year old daughter gurgling away in my wife's arms. I had no job and no prospects of finding one. I had an apartment with two months of rent due to a kindly old and gentle landlord. Yet I had great high hopes, and a sense of participating accomplishment. Those guys on the surface of the moon, a quarter of a million miles away, were beating new trails for me and about me. Things mattered. There was 'magnificent desolation' on that rocky airless body, but there was a great future on planet earth far below.
Even Charles Krauthammer, a man whom, like Bill Bennet, I have vilified over these past few years for being a self-serving, silver-spooned, big mouth, possessed of little real life experience, seems to 'get it' when it comes to what I am writing of. Where the hell has out hope gone? Why have we allowed our leadership and our media to treat the future of humanity, and our culture, as if it is simply another sound bite? How do we get our "Mojo" back? Yes, I am back to discussing the electronic medium of television as part of the great evil here. We have allowed this channel into our hearts and souls to become the purveyor of our belief systems. And that medium is all about sales. Pure and simple return on the investment of a dollar is the only thing it is about. What sells ads gets on the television and stays there. You might as well redefine Fascism using only that one word: Television. The companies that can afford to buy the time get to shape the programming. They determine what programs their ads will run during. They decide what news programs will be supported by their ads. Who but they can spend three million dollars for a small bit of time for an ad on television? And so we have Fascism, which was a word coined prior to WWII to describe society run by corporations and business alone. It was an evil sounding word created to describe just how unjust and cold a culture can be if it is run strictly for commerce and by people who respond only to financial concerns. Have you watched that television over the past six months and viewed bankers? Have you watched our government throw trillions at these 'fascists' to little or no effect, other than that they take the money, declare more 'profits' and then wait for the next 'bailout?' You are watching fascism unfold all around you.
Krauthammer, in his column today, did not indict the media. He blamed us. We are weak. We do not understand, and without his saying it directly, we are stupid. We, the audience of that television media conglomeration, is whom Charles is referring to.
Were you alive when men walked on the moon? If you were not alive yet, do you still thrill at the idea, the videos and the interviews with the people who went there? That feeling of nationalism, Americanism, and humanity that comes over you is the feeling I want to write about. I want to believe that we can get it back. I want to believe that we can take this whole financial mess and turn it around just because we want to. I want to believe that we can go after these banking and investment thieves and take that money back from where they have sent and spent it. I want to believe that the worker in this country is our hero. Those guys on the moon only got there because of unions, scabs, workers working for little and workers working for a lot. And the public that sent them up there is not, and was not, stupid. We were just joined in a cause then. And now we are alone. We all sit in front of that tube and watch alone, or with only a small group nearby. We are not together on anything except hope. And fear about our future and the future of our families and friends.
We should have rebuilt those goddamned towers and built them bigger and better. We still can. Screw all the plans and the private investors and City of New York. They are part of us too. Let's build real airplanes, tough, modern and economical, which we can fly without taking off our shoes to get aboard or huddling afraid, with our little plastic baggies of toothpaste and makeup clutched to our chests. We can go back to the moon. Big time. And we can do it in a lot less than ten years. And we can do in such a manner as to make our own children stand there at Disneyland, like I did that day, with little or nothing except an overwhelming feeling that they are going somewhere with a bunch of winners. We owe it to these kids and the one's coming. We owe it to the world, and to all those people out there counting on us to be what we, indeed, really are. We are a singularly great culture that came out of the muck. We are made up of ancestors who fled prison, execution, famine and disease to come here. And look what we have become out of that! We have become a people who can do anything. We are the only people on earth who can right now. If we will.
Now we need to get off our craven little asses and get busy. We need to make our great leader, and yes I believe that Obama is all of that, give trillions to these projects. We can even throw in highway bridges and the proper generation of intelligent energy. There are no limits. Trillions for these things and no more for any banks. Not one damned cent. If I lose my accounts and my cards, well, I'll be right there with you...and, if I have to go back to Disneyland at my age and stand there with nothing again, then I will do it, if I can watch that giant screen and see hope, pride, and a future projecting out of it and deep back into my hurting soul. Are you willing to risk it and stand there with me?
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