Not With A Bang, But With A Whimper
I was talking to my friend, Dr. Vera, the other day and she was telling me something that had happened to her "in the early 2000s." What did she say? The "early 2000s"? She was talking about the beginning of the 21st Century and she was talking about it in the past tense.

The 21st Century was, for so many years, the future. It was when we would live any way we wanted because medical science would have a cure for whatever ailed us, including any damage we did in careless living. It was when technology would allow us to travel anywhere in minutes instead of hours. It was when we would spend most, if not all of our time in leisure pursuits from sailing underwater to flying to Mars, all in our personal American-made wonder cars that you didn't have to park because they'd just hover wherever you left them.

(art by Harry Grant Dart, 1916)

As I grew up, there were glimpses of the future, some titillatingly close. Bell Telephone promised we'd all have video phones by the early 1970s. We got to the Moon in 1969 and Mars was just around the corner. Supersonic transports (SST) got us from New York to London in 3.5 hours, just enough time for a Martini and a movie. But as the "do your own thing" era unwound, things began to fall apart.

Congress banned SSTs flights over the USA in 1971 (the sonic booms made cows lay eggs as I recall). We made a few more trips to the moon, but without the Soviets to compete against, the US lost interest -- why be in a "space race" when you were already the winner and the only one still racing? Video phones were too expensive and fidgety so consumers found they could easily do without them.

As "the future" arrived, things actually got slower, not faster. Today's cheapest cars can whisk you along at 100+ mph, but laws and traffic congestion make that speed impossible. Air travel was once something so special that you dressed up for the trip (think Mad Men). Today, even the flight attendants don't want to stay on the planes and most passengers look like they just rolled out of bed.

Then there's the future that we've already tried, it didn't work, and we're trying it again. Electric cars come to mind. Below are ads for the Baker Electric (1909 at left, 1912 at right). The first thing you notice is: it's an electric car!!!! Electric cars, like their steam-driven cousins, lost out early to the internal-combustion engine because gasoline was cheap and gas-driven autos had far greater range than their technological rivals. They also didn't blow up as easily (always a plus). Gasoline is still, despite what you've been told, rather plentiful, and I don't mean just from our enemies (The Crude Truth About Oil Reserves, Leonardo Maugeri, Wall Street Journal). It would be even cheaper if so much of your gas dollar didn't go to taxes (the U.S. government makes double what the gas companies make on every gallon you buy).

Meanwhile, people are shocked to learn that their electric cars pollute. These Greenites think the power for their Priuses comes from plugging them into a wall socket, as though the energy is magically produced in the dry wall instead of from burning coal or oil or using nuclear energy (these cars will probably never be powered by the inefficient energy weenies: wind and solar). And what will the huddled hybrid masses do with all of those heavy, Earth-fouling batteries once they no longer hold a charge? Can't worry about that now; green is the new black and if you want to be stylish, you must wear it no matter what the actual cost.

As for medical science saving us, great strides have been made in surgical techniques, artificial limbs, nutrition science, etc., but Obamacare will ration care and strangle incentives for making money off of medical research that lead to life-saving cures. It's already happening (mammograms, Avastin). But don't worry. The left promises us that there's no such thing as "death panels." Surely I can trust the same good souls who make money supporting and being supported by the abortion industry?

Then there are what the Democrats call, "The failed policies of the past." If they were just talking about some of the major blunders made by Nixon and the Bush family, I'd give them props. But they're never talking about their own polices which increasingly resemble such people's utopias as Stalin's Russia, Mao's China, and Boxer's California. The Democrats (and a few Republicans) want to take us into a future that has already proven disastrous in every nation that has tried it. Even the Scandinavians are working to wiggle free.

What happened to "the future"? I think it started to mold and mottle in the 1960s, the decade that brought us 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was as if the Hippies and the Luddites mated and spawned a race of red-tape regurgitating leftists bent on taking America down a peg or two and making the future as dystopian as possible.

It's 10/10/10 this Sunday. There won't be another one for 100 years. Will America still be America a century from now?

Thomas J. Clement