Who is Superman?
Thoughts on the subsonic and supersonic founder and belonging in the world
History, like legacy, happens slowly, in small, often challenging, everyday actions, habits and tasks. In recent days, several news events unfolded. Perhaps you know about some of them, though I doubt you know them all. Two of the most important are probably unknown or obscured to you. I’m writing this to change that.
On a winter day in the Mojave desert, a small private Colorado company founded by an American capitalist from the Midwest broke the sound barrier with a prototype for a civilian aircraft which can liberate millions of people on earth by making air travel faster and cheaper. Do you know about it? If not, read on (if you want to know). If you do know, you may also have something to gain from reading this article.
Reading is fundamental, as the renowned phrase goes. My livelihood depends upon it. Civilization dies in a chaotic, incessant crusade to preclude and stop people from thinking and reading. Reading prevention impoverishes everyone, stifling the free press and dumbing everyone down. Within hours of a private aircraft company breaking the sound barrier—going supersonic—an army helicopter flew directly into a civilian aircraft over the nation’s capital. That’s news you probably heard about. Within hours of that disaster, in which at least 67 people died, another plane crashed in the nation’s first capital city, Philadelphia. You’re probably aware of that, too. Within hours of that disaster, in which many people died, a different type of disaster unfolded in Los Angeles, a city crippled by wildfire and atrocious government.
LA’s where a recording trade association hosted its annual awards ceremony. Amid controversy over one of the world’s top recording artists, who goes by Beyoncé, winning album of the year—her only Grammy award in that category—the wife of an anti-Jewish rapper best known for accosting Taylor Swift went on the red carpet in the nude. You probably heard about or saw pictures of that, too.
Whether you heard (let alone read) about aviation history being made in Southern California’s desert, to paraphrase science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, people tend to accept technology as indistinguishable from magic. This tendency, exacerbated by technological advances in the Nineties, has a corollary: to accept the irrational in its absurdities—such as showcasing the vacant—as indistinguishable from the rational in its manifestations. This chokes exposure to the good and conceals the harmful impact of the bad, i.e., that which coarsens, deadens and drains the living. As Ayn Rand implied in a 1969 lecture contrasting man on the moon with hippies in the mud, “Apollo and Dionysus”, only by thinking can one truly experience the sublime.
In my essay on LA in wildfire, I evoked the tunnel scene in Atlas Shrugged. I think this also applies to the Grammys and twin plane crashes in Philadelphia and the Potomac River. Whatever the causes of these disasters, which I contend are byproducts of the state controlling life in America, Americans suffer the byproduct of the government they elected; ultimately, we get the government we deserve.
Do Americans deserve to cash in on a passenger plane that can take us where we want to go cheaper and faster than we’ve traveled before? That’s partly up to you, dear reader. Whether we do is primarily up to the man and his band of engineers and workers at a company he founded years ago, which, I’m happy to write, I first reported years ago during the founder’s keynote address in Pittsburgh. This gentleman is a friend. He’s a creator—a Fountainhead to use the word Ayn Rand chose as the title of her best-selling novel about the man who creates—and he is an individualist and a capitalist. He can, as I wrote when he started his enterprise up and as he acknowledges in the afterglow of supersonic flight, fail to achieve his ultimate goal.
Whether America deserves what the creator creates is up to each American. Deserving starts with choosing to be aware of what one creates. As one who creates, thanks to readers, subscribers (or investors) investing five dollars a month or a larger sum (if not millions of dollars)—I know I’m the founder, too. I continue to break barriers (my story about two boys on ice became the first fiction to debut in a Chicago publication in years). Whether anyone actually boards a supersonic passenger jet—or reads what the writer writes—the creator creates.
The creator, in this case, Blake Scholl, who conceived the concept and created the company that flew the supersonic jet pictured above, resolves to create. Despite today’s disparagement against making new year’s resolutions and committing to goal-oriented action, the creator creates for his or her own sake. He who commits to trade can achieve what he resolves to do. He is fundamentally the one who made the glorious moment possible (besides pilot Brandenburg) in Southern California’s desert; he is the one who made a story of two boys on a frozen lake which forged a new source for fiction in Chicago; the creator is probably you, too.
To gain the highest value—to stimulate and accelerate yourself to go soaring—avert attention from the vacant and depraved and, instead, set your sights upon what the creator creates. Be curious about what the creator, whether he is yourself, an artist or a founder, creates. Read about it. Think about it. Be invested in it to whatever extent you can. Be curious about what causes an airplane to crash, too. Be curious about why one degrades oneself on a red carpet (or hustles for a fraudulent win). Be curious, trade and keep company with the one who creates. Hold onto him and—once again paraphrasing one who makes this article possible, whose 120th birthday was on Sunday, February 2nd—don’t let the creator go.
You can go farther and faster than ever at a price you can be likely to afford on a supersonic airplane—you don’t have to go under—with Overture. The future belongs to the one who chooses to think, read, write, learn, know, focus, create, trade, belong and attend (as against succumb) to every moment, from agony to ecstasy—in pursuit of the happiest journey. Like yours truly and Blake Scholl, give yourself the fuel you need to fire yourself up. Get going, slow and easy so you can be free to go fast and fabulous. Go for your goal.
Related Links and Articles
Boom Goes Supersonic:
Boom Supersonic: https://boomsupersonic.com/flyby/boom-achieves-supersonic-flight
New York Post: https://nypost.com/2025/01/28/us-news/boom-supersonic-xb-1-jet-dubbed-son-of-concorde-breaks-sound-barrier-for-first-time/
Autonomia (and my stories) also appear on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Hell yeah, here’s to Blake and his team. I want to fly in that jet.