Disclaimer:

I have always loved innovation and space travel. That is not where my criticism lies.

Something has been gnawing at my soul for a long time.

IMHO, rugged American Individualism is one of the great curses of our time. I didn’t always think this way.

In WW2, it took the collective will of nations to stop Hitler and his white supremacist armies from purging the world.

In the very early 60’s, President Kennedy marshaled the self will of our nation to collectively prove that we could innovate together to reach the moon and return to tell about it.

By 1972, the year I graduated from middle school, the general psyche of our nation was one of shame. Nixon pulled the plug on Vietnam, and we have been nursing our wounds ever since.

So why then Bryan are you not inspired by what Branson and Bezos recently accomplished in space?

Well, what have their rugged individual company’s achievement done to rally the collective self will of our nation to marshal together as one to eradicate a host of human ills plaguing our nation, our world here on Earth?

I doubt 1 of 100,000 Americans are even aware of what it took those two men to do a five minute weightless walk in space.

I doubt 1 of 100 Americans were inspired to take the risk of something that great for themselves.

And I can guarantee you from what I observe in daily life now, that less than 1 of 10 Americans are willing to do what it would take to cooperate on anything that would benefit the common good of this nation. It wasn’t always this way.

If in ten years we see an amazing rally of American collaborative ingenuity as a result of these two billionaire’s efforts, then I’ll be happily proved wrong.

In the meantime, I will spend the rest of my living days on Planet Earth working to get people to work together for things that will make life better now, for everyone.