Fifty years ago almost to this day, Anthony Newley’s production of “Stop the World I Want to Get Off” was performed in London.  A few months after that Yuri Gagarin as Soviet cosmonaut  was the first person to leave the earth behind.   A year later, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth. In June of 1969, the first human beings stepped onto the moon.  Yesterday, the last Nasa space shuttle was retired.  America not only has no way of going back to the moon but we can not even put an american in orbit unless we use the rockets of some other country.  While we use to race to the heavens we are now engaged in a race to the bottom.

I have been so frustrated and angry about our political situation in the USA.  I found myself saying “stop the world I want to get off” and then realized as an American, I am stuck her on earth.   We are watching one of the greatest declines of a leading country the world has ever seen.  Here is the sequence of events and why I am so pessimistic that there is a way to turn this around.

In the past most politicians wanted to serve their country.  They might  have different ideas of what was best for the country but they were driven primarily by ideals.  However the job of getting elected became more and more expensive.  They rationalized that if they did not stay in power, who ever would take their place would not do as good of job as they would so making compromises and selling out to special interests was ok if it meant saying in power.  Over time, this began to be their primary objective and doing good for the country was secondary.  However, they did need to accomplish somethings to get elected and this would mean some degree of compromise.  The results were not pretty but the country continued to function.  Now we have people in congress that do not care if they get reelected. We have come full circle except that these people are pretty much insane.  The result is that we use to have problems that got solved, then we had problems that did not get solved and now we are creating problems that can not be solved.

Enjoy this performance of some of the songs from the play by Sammy Davis Jr. It might put you in a better mood.  It did me.