News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. Dec. 21, 2012: Well, well, well! Ho, ho, ho! This is my 99th Commentary in my Obama’s America series and just in time for Christmas.
Now to be charitable – it being Christmas let’s say I have a somewhat ‘nuanced’ view of the Obama Presidency and I could justify giving Barack another lump of coal again this Christmas – I wonder what he does with all the coal – for not keeping his promise when he first ran and said that he would be our Change Master for the good we all expected him to deliver?. Not uphold the Status Quo!
Still I’d like to see him succeed in his second term – after all I did vote for him or more precisely against the other guy – not that I am hopeful, because if he does not do a better job for the 99 percent of us the next 4 years we lose, not him. He’ll do fine any way.
So I want to give President Obama a very imaginative, very unusual gift; something he would not think of giving himself in his wildest dreams. But if he accepts the gift and uses it, it will do more than anything else to make him a President who even generations from now is viewed very favorably. Historically so!
Believe it or not it is a gift not even the nutty Republicans will be able to criticize him for and they will love it too ! And it is a gift so big he can share it with everyone on Earth!
What America needs most of all is a new vision for itself; something to inspire us as a nation once again and to give the rest of humanity something to appreciate us for and to follow our lead.
Where better to look? Indeed where else to look but to the Heavens. It worked so, so well for us in the past, even though Barack Obama doesn’t have a Clue this gift is just what he needs. We do too.
Back when America was formed and for generations after, what propelled these United States to greatness was our widely shared feeling of destiny made very real by our actions even as we dealt with or did not deal with our failings.
After losing our way in the late 1940s and 1950s, the magic of Space Flight captured our national imagination and propelled us to the Moon triumphant. Only shortly after to crash once again on the ashes of Vietnam, increasing gap between the wealthy and the rest of us, and the space program became nothing more than a burden punctuated from time to time by the purposeless Space Shuttle.
Now even that is gone, ironically replaced by companies that are furthering the ever widening wealth gap in a dramatic fashion competing to build space craft to take the super rich on joy rides in orbit at a price tag higher than most Americans make in a life time
So here is my special priceless Christmas gift for President Obama!
It is an idea that he can easily transform into official policy by simply issuing an executive order. I will write it for him if he likes.
All President Obama needs to do to make use of my Christmas gift is to use his power to declare by executive order ….
…. that the United States will not abide by any UN resolutions or any treaties that bar Americans or anyone from claiming and owning land on the Moon. That the U.S. will recognize such claims within some very precise and reasonable limits.
That is all President Obama has to do to re-ignite the U.S. space program far beyond anything we have ever seen and have Americans rushing back to the Moon to stay even while Barack Obama is still President of the United States.
Here is the secret of human development – if you don’t know it – throughout history propelling us, alive in our psyche as much as ever even though it is at a dead end here on Earth. It is exploration and claiming parts of the most precious resource of all LAND.
LAND was at the core of America’s growth as it has been for every civilization in all of human history. Nothing is as valuable as land and owning it is at the center of all wealth creation. If the U.S. had remained 13 small colonies and never added another acre of land we would not be the United States today at best we would be some small inconsequential nation more likely have broken up into smaller pieces to be gobbled up by others.
And it will be the Promise of being able own land on the Moon that will drive exploration into the Heavens in the most practical and useful ways. That lunar soil will be developed in all kinds of imaginative ways either by the original space faring land owners or those they later sell or lease it to who will do so.
The result of the necessity of Americans being able to own legitimate legal deeds to land on the Moon fully recognized by the United States government and U.S. Courts. And then the rest of the world which will have no choice but to do the same – the result over the coming decades will allow America to dream great dreams again as hundreds then thousands then even more humans led by American men and women live and work on the Moon.
If President Obama uses my gift he should want to live a long life because if he does by his 90th birthday if not much sooner he and everyone else will be able to look up into the nighttime sky and be mesmerized by a dazzling cacophony of lights twinkling from the Moon’s surface not the reflected Sun, our own success glittering.
Merry Christmas everyone! Look up in the sky and see our future.
Especially you President Barack Obama. Use your Gift!!!
The Star of Bethlehem is our own Moon!
(and the next full Moon is December 28th)
About The Writer: Arthur Piccolo is a professional writer and commentator and often writes about Latin America for New Americas.
