America: Then and Now

Colonel Dan, SASS #24025 Life, Regulator

Miss Mary and I took our daughter, Southpaw Sweetheart, her husband, Santa Fe River Stan, our grandson Dominator and granddaughter, Little Livvy to Kennedy Space Center recently. It was their first time but since Miss Mary and I live only 45 minutes away and have annual passes, we’ve spent many an enjoyable day at KSC.

Every time we visit I’m recharged by a look back into an era of unparalleled scientific achievement spanning the 60’s and early 70’s—the years of my teens and early 20’s. I remember well when America proudly undertook JFK’s challenge to go to the moon after it became clear the USSR had gotten an early jump on us in the “space race” by being the first to put a satellite and a man into orbit. After an initial struggle, America bounced back with a vengeance. Our country took up this challenge like something rarely seen since WW II.

As our American successes mounted, with Alan Sheppard’s first manned space flight then John Glenn’s first manned orbital flight followed eventually by Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins’ moon landing, we became an increasingly bold, enthusiastic, inventive and confident country. There was nothing America couldn’t do when she put her mind to it…of that we were all convinced. Success was to be expected and ‘failure was not an option’ as became the catch phrase surrounding Apollo 13 when suddenly a life-threatening tragedy became NASA’s finest hour. Apollo 13 developed into a most wonderful success when we taxed our collective brains to the limit bringing those astronauts home safely after their command module experienced a serious explosion enroute to the moon. Failure was not in our vocabulary back then. We just wouldn’t accept delivery of anything marked “failed.” That wasn’t the American way and we all knew it. Do you remember that feeling of invincibility; of our destiny for greatness? I remember that and every time I go back to KSC and look at those rockets, artifacts and astronauts of our past, that feeling returns to the sunrise of my memory. How proud we were, how bullet proof we were and how very confident of our future we were.

On the other hand, there was a segment of Americans back then that saw only the gutter—real or imagined—America was in need of transformation. Viet Nam, capitalism, morality and drug laws were the targets of this particular group that sometimes took violently to the streets in protest against almost everything American. I’m sure many remember that time as well. I vividly recall being looked upon with derision as I walked through airports and campuses wearing a military uniform in the early half of the 1970’s.

We definitely had a divided house existing under one roof. A proud segment that shouted never say die and shot for the moon with national pride against an angry segment that shouted America must die and shot for the gutter of wholesale change. Fortunately, the proud majority were in control while the angry minority lacked real authority. Their area of operations back then was confined to the streets not political office and had they been in charge, the American flag would’ve never been planted on the moon.

Unfortunately we’re still divided into these two camps. There remains the majority of the proud and the minority of the angry. The proud among us remain convinced of American greatness and exceptionalism—Americans who know we can do anything and that failure is still not an option. The angry however remain equally convinced that the only way is to tear down America and transform it into the same vision they had during the tumultuous 60’s. But that was then and this is now. So what’s the difference between then and now? There is a huge difference between the America a proud JFK envisioned then and the America an angry Obama envisions now. Today although that same angry segment remains in the minority, they’re in charge politically, controlling both houses of congress as well as the White House, while the proud, still the majority, take to the streets as we’ve seen by the tea party movement and related protests. It’s funny how history ebbs and tides as mankind’s saga unfolds.

I’m confident the proud will again regain its political position and America will return to that gallant sense of bullet proof confidence we had when our sites were set on the moon and the angry will return to the gutter from which their sites have never risen.

Just the view from a somewhat nostalgic saddle...

Contact Colonel Dan: coloneldan@bellsouth.net

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