William Shatner Goes Into Space – Yet, There Are Plenty of Space On Tables Needed to Feed The Hungry in America!
By Donald “Braveheart” Stewart
As I sit in my Kailyard I wonder often about the future.
“Everybody in the world needs to do this,” the Canadian actor told Mr Bezos after landing back on Earth. “It was unbelievable.”
In tears, he added: “What you have given me is the most profound experience. I’m so filled with emotion about what just happened. I hope I never recover from this. I hope I can retain what I feel now. I don’t want to lose it.” BBC NEWS
There has been mass excitement over here as the man who boldly went where no other had gone before, boldly went again.
Forget the split infinitive that English teachers may have an issue over, William Shatner, sometime crooner, or speaker of songs, actor and all round kinda icon, went off into space to gain perspective.
Really?
At 90 years old do you need to go all the way up there, look down on the earth and feel weepy, to know what the purpose of it all actually is?
Where have you been all your life?
Look, I get it, I can understand the appeal. I can see why it is that the new space race – happily forgetting some kind of space force be scrambled – to support spoiled billionaires to get their hearty hands upon the next real estate opportunity, the final frontier, there is plenty to marvel at how they got there, and why they came back.
The space race just got more real.
For billionaires. Or millionaires and I know that once they have managed to get through it a few times there shall be opportunities for the rest of us to get a cut price ticket on a budget space rocket and get up and have the same experience.
Well at my age it is unlikely but people who are to follow me might get that advantage.
My problem with the whole caper is very simple.
Can you imagine what the money being spent on sending a few up to space would do for the many in poverty in the US? Or the UK? Or, God forbid, the world?
Do we really need to nip up thousands of miles, take a selfie with our planet to gain “perspective”?
Should you not spend ten minutes in a ghetto, spend some time watching the polar ice caps melting, or contemplating that the violence on the streets of “civilized” societies are out of hand? Shall we say to the survivors of countless shootings in the school system that we have things in hand, or shall we, show them photos of us shooting at the moon to comfort them and show “perspective”?
The rush to escape the planet feels like it is being driven by a host of privileged teenage kids who have to get out the house before their mom realizes that they have left their room in an awful state. They need away before it realized that the chores have not been done, the respect due to others has not been paid and those left behind are left trying to sort out the pieces that are falling around their ears because the offspring are recalcitrant, unapologetic jerks.
But we get to go to space; well, if you can afford to.
Whilst there are people unable to afford putting food on the table for young children, this is a price, for me, too expensive to be paid by any society – civilized or not…
It comes as there are increasing reports that the very company behind the whole venture, Blue Origin are being accused of a “toxic work culture” and failing to “adhere to proper safety protocols”.
They deny these accusations vehemently. What is undeniable is that, having employed a former astronaut on Star Trek, Shatner may be the oldest to go into space but not the first Star Trek actor to do so! Aw diddums…
A view from the new Kailyard or, how you look over there, from over here…
(kailyard n. a genre of sentimental Scottish literature turned into effective invective comment from one Donald worth reading…)
[si-contact-form form=’2′]