The Rise of Atlantis, the Closing of the American Frontier

Early 19th Century Los Angeles (i.e. The Western Frontier)

 
Scratch any sci-fi geek and find a person in love with the frontier of Space.

Star Trek Introduction (1966)



Scratch an American and find a person willing to do the unexpected.

Or read this quote by Bismarck:

"There is a Providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children and the United States of America.”

Last week, the Last Space Shuttle Flight lifted off:

Space Shuttle Atlantis Final take off


After Space Shuttle Atlantis leaves the International Space Station [ISS], there are no plans for America to return. Or go farther out into the black.  

And SETI (Search for Extraterrestial Intelligence)  is shutting down their search as well.

Americans are a forgiving and optimistic bunch, even during the worst of times.  And American leaders are given many archetypes -- the Cowboy (Bush fils, Reagan); the Diplomat (Bush pere, Nixon), and the Intellectual (Obama, Wilson). 

No matter what archetype is in the White House, the dream of the American Frontier must be kept alive or they are voted out of office.  

President Obama was hired to move America to a post-racial place and to fix the economy that fell in 08.  Neither came true; And now the Frontier, the basis for America, is closed. 

Please thank President Obama for shutting that door. 

Space is the final frontier.  So are the oceans.

And the reason why Palin looks good as POTUS is because she came from the American Frontier up north. 

Let's hear what Fredrick Jackson Turner said about the American Frontier at the end of the 19th Century:

"From the time the mountains rose between the pioneer and the seaboard, a new order of Americanism arose. The West and the East began to get out of touch of each other. The settlements from the sea to the mountains kept connection with the rear and had a certain solidarity. But the over-mountain men grew more and more independent. The East took a narrow view of American advance, and nearly lost these men. Kentucky and Tennessee history bears abundant witness to the truth of this statement. The East began to try to hedge and limit westward expansion. Though Webster could declare that there were no Alleghanies in his politics, yet in politics in general they were a very solid factor. 

"The exploitation of the beasts took hunter and trader to the west, the exploitation of the grasses took the rancher west, and the exploitation of the virgin soil of the river valleys and prairies attracted the farmer. Good soils have been the most continuous attraction to the farmer's frontier. The land hunger of the Virginians drew them down the rivers into Carolina, in early colonial days; the search for soils took the Massachusetts men to Pennsylvania and to New York. As the eastern lands were taken up migration flowed across them to the west. Daniel Boone, the great backwoodsman, who combined the occupations of hunter, trader, cattle-raiser, farmer, and surveyor-learning, probably from the traders, of the fertility of the lands of the upper Yadkin, where the traders were wont to rest as they took their way to the Indians, left his Pennsylvania home with his father, and passed down the Great Valley road to that stream. Learning from a trader of the game and rich pastures of Kentucky, he pioneered the way for the farmers to that region. Thence he passed to the frontier of Missouri, where his settlement was long a landmark on the frontier. Here again he helped to open the way for civilization, finding salt licks, and trails, and land. His son was among the earliest trappers in the passes of the Rocky Mountains, and his party are said to have been the first to camp on the present site of Denver. His grandson, Col. A. J. Boone, of Colorado, was a power among the Indians of the Rocky Mountains, and was appointed an agent by the government. Kit Carson's mother was a Boone.35 Thus this family epitomizes the backwoodsman's advance across the continent,"

In the American Frontier, even the lowliest family can rise to strength (Look at Los Angeles, the very edge of the American frontier -- that is why the GOP can win here).  With the closing of the Frontier, only those who had good families who went to good schools will succeed.  

This is not America.

America is the Frontier; Obama closed it, the next American President (probably of the "Cowboy" type) will re-open it again.

My questions: How far does the next American Frontier extend? And who will open it again?