Everything ends. A hard truth, because we are a sentimental species. We have pleasant memories of more hopeful times, and we yearn for a return of days that will never repeat.

The future that the past promised us was never to be. A rocket powered tomorrow with monorails, a moon Hilton, and push button ease has been denied.

The blue haired, “gender” confused, angry world of today was never part of yesterday’s tomorrow…. Had it been, I doubt any of us would have signed on for it.

What future have we now? What kind of tomorrow is even possible after a few more years of days like today?

If you were to take a time machine back to 1952 and tell the past what 2023 was like, they wouldn’t believe you.  

They wouldn’t believe you because they wouldn’t understand the total lack of values... and hope.

They wouldn’t believe you because in 1952, America had the brightest of futures ahead of it — a future like this wouldn’t even be possible or fathomable to the mid-century citizens of the most prosperous and thriving nation in the world. 

Can you picture America in 2070? What do you see when you try?  

Do you have visions of monorails, flying electric cars, and staycations at the moon Hilton? Or does it look more like a burned out, radioactive hellscape?

Based on our collective performance in recent todays, our tomorrows stand little chance of being able to take care of themselves.

Yesterday they promised flying cars and moon resorts. Instead, we got Satan’s sausage roll performing black magic rituals at the Grammys. Today they promise we will own nothing and eat bugs…. Wanna take a gander at what tomorrow really looks like? I don’t.

Perhaps it is time that we consider our options, and look at 2023 as a time of hospice for our Republic, palliative care. Because it seems we have multiple cancers eating away at the body of our nation, and they are aggressive. It seems unlikely that we survive any one of the disasters on our doorstep, much less all of them. Or, perhaps we don’t….

Enjoy the bounty of food still yet available, take a Sunday drive with your family, re-read a book you like, and plant a garden. Go to an all-you-can-eat buffet, and drop $20 in the casino. Join others at church and sing praise to God!

Most importantly, find some Americana to indulge in! Drive route 66, go to a drive-in movie, go cruising on Saturday night down “Main Street” like the teenagers of yesteryear! Go park your middle aged self in the parking lot of a closed business and blast Frank Sinatra! Find a steakhouse with burgundy booths, white tablecloths, and gaudy wallpaper!

Tell your kids that you are taking the grandchildren out of school for a month to see the Grand Canyon and the Gateway Arch! Stay in a teepee motel in San Bernardino, and go to Little America, Wyoming! See the U.S.A. in a Chev-ro-let! Because America’s the greatest land of all — even still! Your grandchildren can stand to miss a few pronoun indoctrination classes.

There is still an awful lot of America left in America; but how long will it remain this way? Well, as the Benjamin Franklin story goes, “if [we] can keep it.” Don’t loosen your grip!

The twilight of an empire is painful, but not necessarily fatal. Along the bumpy road to being an average country we have already incurred casualties, there’s no doubt — but America can be great again.

Image: Free image, Pixabay license, no attribution required.