This is great, but please don't degrade it by calling it porn. Porn is a rotten industry feeding the worst impulses and values into our culture. One overlooked part of getting back to competency and prosocial values is the language we use.
Concur re: Artemis and the best of US tech and science. Looking forward to the other scientific agencies recovering when this Administration is left in the dust.
Just want to note the absolute contrast of the Artemis II crew with the MAGA vision of competence and leadership being embodied solely in white men. In January 2024, MAGA idol Charlie Kirk said, "If I see a Black pilot, I'm going to be like, 'Boy, I hope he's qualified.'" Trump and his cabinet members have been systematically demoting, forcing resignations and firing women and non-white men, most recently Maj. Gen. William Green Jr., the Army’s Chief of Chaplains, fired for no apparent reason other than the color of his skin by the wildly unqualified, incompetent SecDef Pete Hegseth. They have also systematically tried to remove or prosecute Black women, including Fed Governor Lisa Cook and NY AG Letitia James.
The Artemis II crew includes Victor Glover, a Black man and Navy Captain, as pilot, a woman as Mission Specialist Christina Koch and a Canadian man, Jeremy Hansen, as Mission Specialist. While MAGA desperately tries to drag the US and the world back into the stone age of men displaying their dominance by bashing everyone else with clubs, NASA and the world moves forward based on merit and true competence.
I remember all too well the first time men travelled around the moon. Then, too, America was in chaos. An increasingly unpopular and terribly frustrating war had taken the lives of tens of thousands of American and millions of Vietnamese. Amid governmental and military claims of victory, the Tet Offensive had proven our incompetence and the utter misunderstanding of what we were doing over there. Civil rights protests had torn our cities apart with the violence of the reaction to two hundred years of racial bigotry, suppression, and mass murder. Millions of Americans were in the streets, both sides utterly convinced of their righteousness. American leaders, both black and white had been assasssinated.
Then, at the end that terrible year of 1968, Frank Borman and his two companions in Apollo 8 went far further than any human beings had ever gone, rounding the moon, counting on a single untried engine to break them out of lunar orbit and send them home. The specter of engine failure hung over the mission, raising the unthinkable possibility of three dead men orbiting the moon, endlessly unreachable.
But then an extraordinary photograph appeared; the first Earthrise. And the voices of three Americans reached the earth reciting the Biblical story of the creation of that lovely blue, white, and green world which we saw for the first time from a quarter of a million miles away. One did not need to be a Christian or a Jew to get the message. We were only the one species, we had only the one world, the one home. And then the engine fired and three human beings did come home.
For an extraordinary moment, all of us on this good earth had the chance to understand what that moment meant.
Thank you for this. We need to all take a look as well at the diversity of the crew both in space and on the ground. It is mmigration and diversity and our embrace of them that have made our nation able to achieve great things -- not racism and White Christian Nationalsim.
Beautiful piece, reminding us that we do have the ingenuity, perseverance, determination and courage to return this country to a working democracy rather than a theatric failure.
“Washington itself has become a performance of governance rather than governance itself. The corruption is no longer even hidden; it’s aestheticized in Trump’s White Trash ballroom, his triumphal arch, his grubby merch, all branded and sold as strength, honor, patriotism, but leaving a ghoulish, shameful stain.”
Great. Can this entire essay be read into the congressional record? Now? Followed by a pop quiz that highlights the practice of competence and perseverance. The very aptly named INTEGRITY capsule encapsulates so much that is honorable. A breath of fresh air
And what's at the heart of all this competence? Expertise. Which makes one wonder, at what point in time did the MAGA cult decide to brand expertise as "elitism," and embrace the idea that a former TV game show host was the guy to hold the most powerful office on earth? The man who has given us Hegseth, Noem, RFK Jr., Patel, Miller, Mullin, etc.? And at what point in time will the cult finally admit that this gang of authoritarians are as un-American as anyone could possibly be?
It started *long* before MAGA. Remember Spiro Agnew and his "nattering nabobs of negativism" and his "impudent intellectual snobs"? Richard Hofstadter's ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM IN AMERICAN LIFE was published in 1963. I read it before I got to college a few years later. Unfortunately this gang is an American as apple pie. Neither Trump I nor Trump II came out of nowhere. We've been headed in this direction at least since Reagan, and the packing of the Supreme Court by Republican presidents gave us, among other delights, the Citizens United decision of 2010. (Thanks to Mitch McConnell it got worse in the decade that followed.)
This is great, but please don't degrade it by calling it porn. Porn is a rotten industry feeding the worst impulses and values into our culture. One overlooked part of getting back to competency and prosocial values is the language we use.
Concur re: Artemis and the best of US tech and science. Looking forward to the other scientific agencies recovering when this Administration is left in the dust.
Just want to note the absolute contrast of the Artemis II crew with the MAGA vision of competence and leadership being embodied solely in white men. In January 2024, MAGA idol Charlie Kirk said, "If I see a Black pilot, I'm going to be like, 'Boy, I hope he's qualified.'" Trump and his cabinet members have been systematically demoting, forcing resignations and firing women and non-white men, most recently Maj. Gen. William Green Jr., the Army’s Chief of Chaplains, fired for no apparent reason other than the color of his skin by the wildly unqualified, incompetent SecDef Pete Hegseth. They have also systematically tried to remove or prosecute Black women, including Fed Governor Lisa Cook and NY AG Letitia James.
The Artemis II crew includes Victor Glover, a Black man and Navy Captain, as pilot, a woman as Mission Specialist Christina Koch and a Canadian man, Jeremy Hansen, as Mission Specialist. While MAGA desperately tries to drag the US and the world back into the stone age of men displaying their dominance by bashing everyone else with clubs, NASA and the world moves forward based on merit and true competence.
You write your articles very well. You make your points. You don't know when you've done so and need to close.
Larry Kenworthy
I remember all too well the first time men travelled around the moon. Then, too, America was in chaos. An increasingly unpopular and terribly frustrating war had taken the lives of tens of thousands of American and millions of Vietnamese. Amid governmental and military claims of victory, the Tet Offensive had proven our incompetence and the utter misunderstanding of what we were doing over there. Civil rights protests had torn our cities apart with the violence of the reaction to two hundred years of racial bigotry, suppression, and mass murder. Millions of Americans were in the streets, both sides utterly convinced of their righteousness. American leaders, both black and white had been assasssinated.
Then, at the end that terrible year of 1968, Frank Borman and his two companions in Apollo 8 went far further than any human beings had ever gone, rounding the moon, counting on a single untried engine to break them out of lunar orbit and send them home. The specter of engine failure hung over the mission, raising the unthinkable possibility of three dead men orbiting the moon, endlessly unreachable.
But then an extraordinary photograph appeared; the first Earthrise. And the voices of three Americans reached the earth reciting the Biblical story of the creation of that lovely blue, white, and green world which we saw for the first time from a quarter of a million miles away. One did not need to be a Christian or a Jew to get the message. We were only the one species, we had only the one world, the one home. And then the engine fired and three human beings did come home.
For an extraordinary moment, all of us on this good earth had the chance to understand what that moment meant.
But we chose not to, and so here we are again.
Thank you for this. We need to all take a look as well at the diversity of the crew both in space and on the ground. It is mmigration and diversity and our embrace of them that have made our nation able to achieve great things -- not racism and White Christian Nationalsim.
Beautiful piece, reminding us that we do have the ingenuity, perseverance, determination and courage to return this country to a working democracy rather than a theatric failure.
“Washington itself has become a performance of governance rather than governance itself. The corruption is no longer even hidden; it’s aestheticized in Trump’s White Trash ballroom, his triumphal arch, his grubby merch, all branded and sold as strength, honor, patriotism, but leaving a ghoulish, shameful stain.”
Luckily for the astronauts, NASA isn't staffed by mediocrities and incompetents in thrall to Big Money.
I was glued to my screen during Orion’s reentry and safe perfect landing. The disaster of this country faded away.
Beautiful. Thank you for putting into words just what I've been thinking.
Great. Can this entire essay be read into the congressional record? Now? Followed by a pop quiz that highlights the practice of competence and perseverance. The very aptly named INTEGRITY capsule encapsulates so much that is honorable. A breath of fresh air
And what's at the heart of all this competence? Expertise. Which makes one wonder, at what point in time did the MAGA cult decide to brand expertise as "elitism," and embrace the idea that a former TV game show host was the guy to hold the most powerful office on earth? The man who has given us Hegseth, Noem, RFK Jr., Patel, Miller, Mullin, etc.? And at what point in time will the cult finally admit that this gang of authoritarians are as un-American as anyone could possibly be?
It started *long* before MAGA. Remember Spiro Agnew and his "nattering nabobs of negativism" and his "impudent intellectual snobs"? Richard Hofstadter's ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM IN AMERICAN LIFE was published in 1963. I read it before I got to college a few years later. Unfortunately this gang is an American as apple pie. Neither Trump I nor Trump II came out of nowhere. We've been headed in this direction at least since Reagan, and the packing of the Supreme Court by Republican presidents gave us, among other delights, the Citizens United decision of 2010. (Thanks to Mitch McConnell it got worse in the decade that followed.)
Yup. At what point…. A question that gets repeated. With bewildering frequency
I especially loved this, Rick. It reminded me of what the very best of us can be.