March 29, 2024

What was America doing?

A European spacecraft landed on a comet Wednesday.

At 57, I guess I’m too old to matter, but I remember when it seemed that only Americans did that kind of thing.

And, because I live in America, I kinda wonder what we were doing when the Europeans were figuring out how to land a spaceship on a comet hundreds of millions of miles away.

Maybe we were arguing about whether it’s the “Democrat Party” or the “Democratic Party.”

Or we could have been deciding if it’s “suicide bomber” or “homicide bomber.”

Maybe we were writing a new “non-gender specific” version of the “Hail Mary.”

Or perhaps we were passing legislation aimed at forestalling the spread of Sharia Law in Alabama.

Ya never know.

When those pointy-headed can-do European engineers were figuring out how to land a spaceship on a comet, maybe we were fighting the battle for “Merry Christmas” and against “Happy Holidays.”

Maybe we were suppressing imaginary voter fraud or arguing about the relative happiness of slaves in the Old South. They loved it or they didn’t. Pick a side. It’s important.

We might have been scrapping about unisex bathrooms or gay marriage or breastfeeding in public. Then again, we might have been busied by another round of the “why young people shouldn’t wear baggy jeans” discussion.

We coulda been arguing about whether the world was created hundreds of millions of years ago or whether God whipped it up in exactly seven 24-hour days sometime before the American Revolution.

Of course, maybe it wasn’t something that trivial. Maybe we were trying to decide where the president was really born, in America, in Kenya or in the heart of Hell.

Yeah. Used to be America was a scientist with a high brow and a crisp white lab coat, or maybe a guy in work clothes with a lunch bucket.

Now, America is a person on the couch with talk radio on speed dial or some lathered-up boondock politician screaming dire warnings about the Federal Reserve Bank, Mexicans and (yes, still) fluoride in your water.

America used to do it first and best and biggest. Now, we argue about it longer and harder and dumber.

Our supposed primacy in the world exists only in that we will still send our young people to die in purposeless, endless wars started by people who have spent their political careers arguing about whether you should be allowed to pray before high school football games.

You wanna build a new kind of spaceship in America, first you gotta decide if it’s a Republican or Democrat spaceship. Then, you gotta decide if it’s a liberal or conservative spaceship. Then, you gotta decide if it’s a Christian spaceship with tradition values.

Then, when the argument finishes, you can start the work.

Trouble is, in America, the argument never finishes.

Marc Munroe Dion is a nationally syndicated columnists. His book of Pulitzer Prize-nominated columns, “Between Wealth and Welfare: A Liberal Curmudgeon in America,” is available on Nook and Kindle.