Writes Philip Kennicott, in "Trump’s dark rhetoric eclipses the new wonders of the Space Age" (WaPo).
I'm a little older than Kennicott, who was probably a young child at the time of the first moon landing. I was 18 and completely disaffected because of the Vietnam War. I didn't experience anything like "wide-eyed wonder." The boys my age were all in danger of being drafted and sent to fight in a war people were justifiably pessimistic about. Nixon was just as horrible to us as Trump is to the Trump-haters of today. I declined to respond with the awe the news shows told us to feel because I didn't want to see anything going well for Nixon. Less than a month after the moon landing, there was Woodstock. Who was a sucker for "telegenic decency" in the summer of 1969? Were we conned by "the symbolic power of winning the race to the moon"? Five years before the landing, we were laughing at Bob Dylan's sarcastic lines, "I ask you how things could get much worse/If the Russians happen to get up there first/Wowee! pretty scary!"
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117 comments:
The TDS chorus would never acknowledge any advance by President Trump, even when America remains the only country capable of getting astronauts to the moon. Even the Soviets never actually got to lunar orbit, and modern Russia is no more prepared to do so.
But that is fine President Trump is so far ahead of his ankle biters that he has to be wondering why he should ever cede power to them at all.
Why in the world would anyone be worried about nuclear bombs because we are at war with Iran? Unless they think that Iran has them, in which case we damn well better be disarming them.
..."[O]n a nervous night, the world watched us again... wondering whether there might be nuclear bombs..."
Nuclear bombs, huh? From who? Is he thinking the US was going to drop them? Hoping, even? And then, "Trump backed down". War Crimes, or Chicken, all options covered.
I'm really puzzled at how this whole 'one movie, two screens' thing works - I have yet to discover any intellectual explanation, besides pure fakery, or pure delusion.
It's not often I get to say "I'm young enough to remember" my teachers wheeling a TV into the classroom so we could watch the Apollo mission lift-off.
So Philip Kennicott wants us to believe Trump ruined the historic moment Artemis presented because of, er, Trump and the threat of nuclear war. What? Not only does he suffer from TDS, but he's also an asshole.
[O]n a nervous night, the world watched us again... wondering whether there might be nuclear bombs.... Trump backed down Anyone who thought Trump was going to drop a nuclear bomb is a moron.
Trump did not back down. He is getting what he wanted in the same fashion he usually does. How can Americans be awed by space technology when most can't engage in pattern recognition?
Kennicott was very much in the minority then. In a different way, he's in a minority now. There's less interest and enthusiasm for the moon shot now, but people are able to have different ideas and emotions at the same time. It's not like the war blotted out all interest and approval of the Artemis mission -- and if that were the case, has the ceasefire blotted out indignation about the war?
I'm really getting fascinated by the prospect of midterms. It's a similar feeling to the 2024 election, where the inroads that were made to clean up the balloting process were significant enough to highlight the suspicious oddness of 2020, and where, as it turned out, voters acted decisively to show disapproval of the Democrat status quo.
I get the feeling that more of this is happening now. Trump, by showing how appallingly easy it was to close the border, through his actions expelling illegal immigrants, the fight against endemic institutional fraud, and now on the diplomatic scene with Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, is pulling the electorate away from the Democrat's 'Temple of Fringe', DEI, and bureaucratic overreach.
He's highlighting familiar values, the purpose of will when it comes to getting things done that are constructive, rather than destructive, and showing actual accomplishments, results. Trump has created positive movement on a lot of issues that have been historically entrenched, as if they were 'too difficult to handle'. It turns out, they weren't - the political will was just being directed toward other, less transparent goals. The midterms are going to show a lot, I think (and I could easily be wrong).
"I declined to respond with the awe the news shows told us to feel because I didn't want to see anything going well for Nixon."
So you had TDS before we knew what to call it. Even getting a crew to the moon, an incredible feat for mankind and surely for the US, was not a thing to you because it might have made Nixon look good? Yikes. Bob Dylan's words actually had more impact on you than the entire NASA journey from nothing to the moon in 10 years?
Classic 60s liberal.
I was a young man of 15 that year. My friends and I would watch for our draft lottery numbers while in college a couple of years later. In the meantime- I was mesmerized by the entire Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo space programs. And yes- my world stopped to watch when we landed on the moon. I couldn't listen to Dylan then. I still can't.
Kennicott doesnt dissapoint
Yeah, I hated Nixon too, but I was still thrilled by the moon landing. To not be because of Nixon hatred is a bit twisted, I must say.
As it turns out, he was a good president - one of our outstanding ones, IMO. And Watergate, as something that supposedly demonstrated his "evilness" was pretty much a joke, especially when one compares it with what the very Democrat/Deep State that brought him down does to Repubs these days.
The boys my age were all in danger of being drafted and sent to fight in a war people were justifiably pessimistic about. Nixon was just as horrible to us as Trump is to the Trump-haters of today. - The anti-Viet Nam protestors have been proven right. It was a waste. One Nixon inherited from a Democrat. I was a little boy during Nixon. It must have been horrible to watch friends get drafted, and then killed for no reason.
But was is expected of Trump here? How should he treat his haters? They have tried to jail him and kill him. The haters don't just hate Trump. They hate ANYONE who supports Trump.
But was is expected of Trump here? How should he treat his haters? They have tried to jail him and kill him. The haters don't just hate Trump. They hate ANYONE who supports Trump.
over and over - THAT.
But please - don't call the hate fueled left a pack of blood thirsty power obsessed communists.
That's not the way my mind works: something great is happening, but hey, can I find something to ruin it for me and everyone else?
People rarely look for something good to wipe away the bad, but we should.
Actually two great things are happening. People are taking great risks to go back to the moon again, and people on Earth are taking great risks to free millions of people laboring under tyrannical governments. I hope we never stop doing either one until the need evaporates from the efforts. We have a lot of heroes to appreciate, and my definition of hero is not easy to meet.
Given that I share a birthday with the Prof, I can attest to the sometimes overwhelming preoccupation of us young men with Vietnam and the draft. But I never let it distract me so completely that I ignored everything else, including the remarkable accomplishments of NASA. (Like many others, I chose to avoid the army by enlisting in the Air Force in 1969. Ironically, I spent the last 26 months of my enlistment at the army airfield of the Seventh Army Training Center at Granfewohr, Germany. Life is funny sometimes.)
After what we have seen with the swamp's persecution of Trump, are we all sure Watergate wasn't a CIA operation. It seems like these things are easy to pull off, with a predictably biased press, and back then much easier.
I'm no fan of Nixon, too central planning for me, but Nixon ended the war.
Hahaha this is so funny!. I was chatting with my Israeli friend yesterday and we were talking about how wonderful it was that people were now circling the moon once again and sending back awe inspiring pictures of the near-earth playground that we live in.
I told her how wonderful it was growing up in the era of Apollo and that the mission to the Moon in fact inspired and United the entire planet because this was not only an American project, but it was a very human project that everybody could celebrate. The other benefit besides inspiring my generation of kids to enter the sciences and engineering because they were considered to be glamorous Fields that actually help people which in turn caused my generation of kids to forget about the dark cloud of nuclear annihilation that hung over us at the time.
Quite the opposite conclusion from what this putz claims
A rat done bit my sister Nell
With whitey on the moon
Her face and arms began to swell
And whitey's on the moon
I can't pay no doctor bills
But whitey's on the moon
Ten years from now I'll be payin' still
While whitey's on the moon
The man just upped my rent last night
Cause whitey's on the moon
No hot water, no toilets, no lights
But whitey's on the moon
I wonder why he's upping me?
Cause whitey's on the moon?
Well I was already giving him fifty a week
With whitey on the moon
Taxes taking my whole damn check
Junkies making me a nervous wreck
The price of food is going up
And as if all that shit wasn't enough:
A rat done bit my sister Nell
With whitey on the moon
Her face and arm began to swell
And whitey's on the moon
Was all that money I made last year
For whitey on the moon?
How come I ain't got no money here?
Hmm! Whitey's on the moon
Y'know I just 'bout had my fill
Of whitey on the moon
I think I'll send these doctor bills
Airmail special
To whitey on the moon
As a late baby boomer, we no longer had the duck and cover drills that are older brothers and sisters of the '50s and early '60s experienced in school. So what do you think was more psychologically stressful? Having kids participate in a defensive operation that the authorities say could possibly save their lives or to abandon that all together and send the message to children that there is no hope duck and cover won't work. We're basically fucked.
The space program was the perfect diversion. I am constantly reminding my gen z coworkers who talk about how stressful the world is today and remind them that when I was a kid things were so bad. There was actually no hope at all and once you give up hope then you learn to live in the moment and enjoy what you have and so we were happy and knew how to have fun. We worked hard. We partied hard and we didn't apologize for it.
Yeah, Ice nine. Nixon's trilateral diplomacy in the opening up of China was the shove down the stairs that the Soviet Union needed to ultimately collapse in a heap A decade and a half later.
I love Bob Dylan. I have sort of a Bob Dylan shrine in my house. Preorder every official release. But that's a dumb lyric. I consider it part of his back pages.
The Space Race was pretty remarkable. A major front in the Cold War that was fought specifically without killing anybody. How often has that actually happened? It's a bit like single combat (which I suspect only happens in stories). The US and USSR agree to spend war-fighting amounts of money to race to the Moon to prove who has the best system. Small countries absolutely were watching to decide which side to join.
There's a great anecdote in Charles Murray's history of the Apollo Program. Kennedy is trying to decide whether to back the Moon shot or not. He's at a party. He asks the Tunisian ambassador what he thinks: should the US go to the Moon, even if it means less money for foreign aid. The ambassador says: you have to do this.
--- I declined to respond with the awe the news shows told us to feel
They weren't telling you anything personal. They did sense the largeness of that moment. The cheerleading aspect of the coverage, not surprising, seems to have repelled you to the point that it sounds like you missed an extraordinary moment in your stubborn refusals.
Bagoh - Well said.
When did kennedy declare a week after he betrayed the brigadistas on giron beach
Colonel Bui Tin, a senior officer on the General Staff:
" Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. … America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win.”
He noted that high-profile anti-war visits (Jane Fonda, Ramsey Clark, etc.) “gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses.”
I wonder how much of the current destruction in Iran is only needed because the regime listens to the opposition more than they listen to Trump. Trump has told them the truth all along.
In 1969 I was a slick-sleeve draftee serving in the Pentagon. From that particular perch, inside the bowels of what might well have been the largest bureaucracy in the world (certainly one of the largest) I was amazed that any part of the federal government could accomplish anything useful at all. Meanwhile hippie chicks like Althouse were spitting on my fellow draftees. Don’t kid yourself, Professor. None of us have ever forgotten.
"I didn't want to see anything going well for Nixon."
An echo of the past amplified into today's shrieking insanity.
Only the name(s) have changed.
Back then I just thought the space missions were super cool, and I still do.
I don’t get what Woodstock had to do with anything. Is that some secret Boomer lore, comprehensible only after a few joints?
“Astronauts landed on the moon”
Passes doobie, exhales a plume of smoke, “Woodstock”
Because you were 18 and it was a new world every morning, it never crossed your incompletely formed brain that most of the space program that put men on the moon six months after Nixon took office was actually a triumph of Lyndon Johnson? And Nixon wasn't the one escalated the Vietnam conflict. In fact, he was decreasing troop levels. But, yeah, Nixon! The NYT and all your cool friends said so. And ultimately the moon landing was a triumph of Americans, but the 18-year-olds of 1969 had all the fucking answers. And anti-Americanism was one of them.
The achievements of the earlier Space Age were contemporaneously eclipsed by the Vietnam War: Discuss.
Jane Fonda - ugh - she she croaks of natural causes I celebrate.
Wow. I was 12 at the moon landing, and we lived not far from Yasgur's farm. My friend's sister was stuck in the Woodstock traffic jam.
We celebrated the landing with a big party at someone's house. It was a big deal. Also, living on a military installation, we had completely different views of Nixon. In later years, I learned that he was a very competent, politically skilled politician. A very good president. Watergate was the CIA framing him to get him out.
bagoh20 said...
After what we have seen with the swamp's persecution of Trump, are we all sure Watergate wasn't a CIA operation. [sic]
Wrong. It was an FBI operation.
On the day the astronauts landed on the moon I was in AIT at Fort Polk where, along with another 1,000 young men, I was part of a battalion undergoing light weapons infantry training--about 95% of that battalion was going to go Viet Nam as 11 Bravos and 11 Charlies (riflemen and mortarmen) in just 8 week's time. Most of us were suitably awed by the moon landing even though we were in the sh#t and knew it. We weren't sitting in summer vacation on a break during college.
I was too young and don't really remember the actual moon landing. I remember all of the subsequent missions and was utterly fascinated by PEOPLE ACTUALLY ON THE MOON. I do remember watching 2001 and thinking "Yes, it's really starting to happen!" And then we quit the moon and piddled with SkyLab. And then an overly expensive and complicated shuttle.
The unmanned probes were the next best thing for me. I can't remember the first moon landing, but I do remember watching the TV as the first images from the Viking landers sent back pictures. . .FROM THE SURFACE OF FRIGGIN' MARS. By then I was into science fiction and went into a science field for college study.
My worship of all things NASA did erode considerably in the interim. While pretty neat, I'm not really supportive of the platform they're using.
Never cared who was president. In fact, although I thoroughly detest Obama's presidency, I can give him credit for moving spaceflight more to the private sector.
"Whitey on the Moon":
https://youtu.be/goh2x_G0ct4?si=T1wbHfdPw7AqjI5f&t=24
"...the mission to the Moon in fact inspired and United the entire planet because this was not only an American project, but it was a very human project that everybody could celebrate."
Oh nonsense (/sarc). I have been reliably told by a lefty-loony that Apollo was not a "human" project because ALL the astronauts were (now) old, white men.
What a sad, stunted way to view the world.
There would be less war if the antiwar people would let them end sooner instead of encouraging our enemies to stick it out at the expense of their own people.
Marty said...
I spent the last 26 months of my enlistment at the army airfield of the Seventh Army Training Center at Granfewohr, Germany.
I've been there a few times. That was either an awful 26 months, or an awesome 26 months. I hope it was awesome!
"I declined to respond with the awe the news shows told us to feel because I didn't want to see anything going well for Nixon."
This sentiment right here is the ethos of the Democrat Party. Just substitute the "United States of America" for Nixon.
@Big Mike, yeah I was gonna say, not CIA - it was the FBI, Mark Felt the #2 at the agency was resentful of being passed over for the top slot and this was his revenge. He was the Deep Throat informant to Woodward and Bernstein. His photo does him justice.
I thought that Nixon was a good president, although he was also pretty unlikable. Non-photogenic, sweaty upper lip when he was giving speeches, so on. I was sacking groceries when he resigned, and I couldn't understand the jubilation coming from some of my colleagues, many of whom I liked, respected. I couldn't make it make sense, based on what I had read and heard. My early exposure to Political Derangement Syndrome.
The security chief mccord was cia as was hunt
Think of the improvement Nixon would be over today’s contemporary Democrats. If you can’t find the humor… the IRONY in that, you need to wake up.
I never had that thing. That desire for bad things for the country just because I didn't approve of the current President. That seems very selfish and small-minded, an emotional loss of reason and patriotism.
I really despised both Obama and Biden, but I never wanted bad news on the economy or anything else when they were President. I'd rather things go well despite them than prove them wrong at the nation's expense. My own personal fortunes didn't seem to follow who was President or what policies they pursued, except back during Bush 1, when the luxury tax nearly put the business I worked for under before they repealed it, which was just in time to keep from closing down.
Interesting how for some Kennedy’s and Johnson’s war became “Nixon’s War.” Never mind that Nixon ended it. Anyone who believes the calumny began with Trump has erased history. Some of us whose deferments were lapsing were grateful to Nixon.
And, “[O]n a nervous night, the world watched us again…wondering whether there might be nuclear bombs.” Geez! This really is moron fodder. I am embarrassed for the world if it’s wondering that. Who’s talking nukes? This guy is a dunce and WaPo is beyond shame!
Oh, for fuck's sake- anyone who feared Trump was going to nuke Iran last night isn't worth a single second of a rational person's time.
Nukes? Meh! Here’s what is worrying if corrupt Democrats regain power, Solzhenitsyn: "A Communist system can be recognized by the fact that it spares the criminals and criminalizes the political opponent."
I watched the moon landing with my uncle Fred and cousin Tommy in their den in Alexandria VA, where I was spending the summer. Fred was a "two-star civilian" at the Pentagon (head of the Army's civilian employee training programs) and Tommy was my oldest cousin and a nice fellow but more than a bit 'spergy (IMHLO) and of no interest or use to any military force.
OTOH, I was in the middle of two years of compulsory JROTC, with still some notion of joining up at some point. I had given up my early childish notions of going to West Point already, reading their catalog/bulletin (I was the only boy on my block who had written for one) and realizing that it was an engineering school with a heavy sports emphasis.
By HS graduation in '71 I was a long-haired pot-smoking hippie-type individual on my way to the state u down the street, but I always loved the space program and so did all my friends. Presidents were beside the point.
Nixon was behind wage & price controls and affirmative action. He did well with China, but screwed Israel in October’73.
African-American leads America's return to space, to the dark side of the moon.
The thing Gil Scott Heron never almost had his “fill of” was crack.
I was around back then. JFK could embody the glamour of space travel. Not so much with LBJ and Nixon.......That moon landing was stunning. I think perhaps nowadays we're less stunned by technological progress. I'll discuss the topic further with ChatGpt, but it does seem we have integrated the most wondrous changes into just another day.
The thing Gil Scott Heron never almost had his “fill of” was crack.
Give the guy credit though: "Send the bill to whitey" has proven a hardy perennial.
"Nixon was just as horrible to us as Trump is to the Trump-haters of today." Gawd, I hope that I was not in the same mental space as TDS people today. Sure, I strongly disliked him but I thought all that was rational dislike.Turned 18 in 1968 when 300,000 were drafted. He worked on ending the war in a responsible way.
Who was a sucker for telegenic decency in 1969? The silent majority who had power in the country, while those of the professor's generation imagined they had power.
I thought that Nixon was a good president, although he was also pretty unlikable
@Aggie, I was in my mid-20s when Nixon resigned, and back then I would have agreed. Later I came to wonder how much was due to the relentless hatred of the mainstream media. Go back and look at some of those old clips of Dan Rather and Sam Donaldson going one on one with Dick Nixon.
@Beaver7216, you were, but IMHO you were mostly out there by the news media. Today’s TDS sufferers seem to have put themselves where they are at.
Another report by leftists on leftists playing pretend.
FWIW I actually missed the moon landing. I pulled KP that day and was so exhausted all I could do was drag myself back to the small room I rented off post, climb into bed, and go to sleep (our barracks, built as temporary structures back in World War I — yes WW ONE — had been condemned and we were given a small stipend to find off-post housing). I was in the mess hall kitchen when Eagle touched down, and I slept through Armstrong’s “One small step …”
I remember over the years talking about conspiracy theories surrounding government operations and involvement (indeed, I'm currently re-watching X-Files).
Today, with media of all kinds and cameras and microphones in real time, we can be overwhelmed with supposed evidence and blindly believe random comments as truth,. It now seems pretty easy for any far-fetched conspiracy to have actually happened.
But the (lack of) fascination of the Artemis mission is likely because of the proletariats obsession with themselves.
As a side note, Andy Weir's book Artemis is quite good - not as outstanding as The Martian or Project Hail Mary but definitely worth it.
You're using "we" much too broadly.
The boys my age were all in danger of being drafted and sent to fight in a war people were justifiably pessimistic about. Nixon was just as horrible to us as Trump is to the Trump-haters of today
…funny how all y’all waited for Nixon to be President before you started hating Presidents for sending people off to war…by funny I mean funny that you are all revisionist political hacks that can’t leave soon enough. Bunch of stupid meatheads…
…the guy won 49 states and over 60 percent of the popular vote. Somebody had to vote for him…
The reason the Bob Dylan lyric is great is that it successfully ridicules the mainstream argument that we needed to have a space race with the Russians and it was important to get to the moon first.
Bob sang "I ask you how things could get much worse/If the Russians happen to get up there first" and that made it obvious that there were many worse things then getting to the moon second and in fact that nothing in particular would happen if the Russians got there first. It was posturing and propaganda.
We were deprived of the option to straightforwardly admire the highly skilled people who figured out how to land men on the moon and the valiant men who took the ride. Political people had to barge to the forefront and tell us how to feel. They had to make it about patriotism and world domination, not the technology and the challenges of nature.
Those people ruined it for me. And I didn't like the teachers who replaced our planned lessons — back in elementary school — with hours of staring at a TV in the classroom, the theory being that we needed to witness "history in the making."
I don't like being told what to feel, especially when it's a mixed up brew of science and politics.
As expected the Iranian regime reneges.
Kennicott has neither a science/tech background nor popular culture, historical or current. His culture is classical music and philosophy. It shows. He has no idea what he is talking about, but he says it very well.
I despised Jimmy Carter, but when I heard about the failed helicopter mission to rescue the Americans held hostage by Iran, I felt bad for America and bad for Carter. I was 19 years old. My feeling was that he had finally tried to do something positive (instead of hand-wringing) and things had gone badly. I felt that the criticism was piling on.
I remember making models of the rockets, modules and landing craft, being absolutely enthralled with the entire space program, and also looking up at the moon and thinking--wow, there are men up there right now!
Like Barack Obama, I fell into the very brief age cohort who never had to register for the draft.
The moon race was very important as propaganda. If the Russians got there first the perception would be that communism works better than capitalism. Both the US and the Soviets understood that. Dylan was wrong. And as the history of the Soviet bloc abundantly demonstrates, things could have gotten a hell of a lot worse. Maybe you should talk to a few Cubans. Or Poles.
The anti-Vietnam War movement and hatred of the Establishment was going full-bore by the mid-60s, long before Nixon was elected.
There was even a well-known poster and chant--
Hey hey L B J
How many kids did you kill today?
Good times.
I was a 16-year-old girl, and I thought the Apollo 11 Moon Landing was the most amazing thing I had ever witnessed in my life. I’m 73 now, and it is still the most amazing and exciting human event in my life. I was not swayed by the media.
That same year, a political science teacher gave me a C on a paper in which I explained the benefits of the space program, including the technologies and products developed for it that were already being transferred for civilian use and the benefit of all of us. The low grade bothered me, so I asked my English teacher to read it and give me an honest critique. She told me the grade reflected his dislike of the space program, not the quality of my work. He was strongly anti-war, and this was in the Bay Area in the 1960s. Lefties are often so joyless.
The Cold War had many non-lethal fronts. Sports, the arts (the CIA sponsored avant garde art as a poke in the eye to Socialist Realism), and science in all fields. The Moon race was a really big, highly visible battle, an important, consequential battle that wasn't about killing each other. It was an engineering and scientific triumph (read Andrew Chaikin's book if you think we didn't do a lot of basic science in the Apollo program). Without the Cold War, at least on the evidence of the years since, we probably wouldn't have done any of it. Certainly we would have done it a lot slower.
It was all real achievement, independent of war aims, but it also served to recruit nations to our side. And that was good.
I remember being very excited about the landing on the moon. It was a weekend and I ran home from a nearby school playground to watch it on TV. I don’t remember if that was for the landing or for the first walk.
I was 7 in July 1969. I also watched reports from the Vietnam War on the nightly news, but didn’t particularly associate the moon landings or the war with Nixon.
"bagoh20 said...
There would be less war if the antiwar people would let them end sooner instead of encouraging our enemies to stick it out at the expense of their own people."
Absolutely true and also why they do it.
They want us to lose not for there to be no war.
"It was posturing and propaganda."
Nations have histories, the stories of their ancestors, that the citizens of the nation take pride in. Liberals, leftists, Democrat Party members will allow that for every nation but America.
Republicans are about national pride.
Democrats are about national shame,
I was scooping cones at Baskin Robbins when the moon landing happened. We had a special flavor, Lunar Cheesecake, that we only put into the cases after the landing succeeded. I liked it, but it did not sell particularly well. My shift was over in time to see Neil Armstrong take his first step. I was thrilled--for some reason I don't recall any of the patriotism stuff that so annoyed Ms. Althouse.
Fucking Boomers.
“Republicans are about national pride.
Democrats are about national shame,”
Amen. As much as I dislike so many Democrats and what I can make of their ideology, I never EVER thought the Democrats would be so outrageously seditious as they’ve been since losing the last election. They’ve lost what little intelligence and patriotism they ever had and I see no future for them in this country.
The pansy left doesn’t fucking belong here.
Writes Philip Kennicott, in "Trump’s dark rhetoric eclipses the new wonders of the Space Age" (WaPo).
Oh good grief- what a fucking retard.
It's a sad, sad thing If you can't look in awe at the moonshots.
My father worked with Armstrong on a few things. Carrier trials for a couple Navy planes, for instance. And Neil came to NASA Ames to learn VTOL techniques in the X-14. If you google images of my name you can see the publicity shots of the two of them next to it.
Once they were practicing at Half Moon Bay, and the engines failed to start. While the techs were working, dad asked Neil, "So, if this happens on the moon, who are you going to call?". They were not exactly best friends. Maybe it was a Marine vs Navy thing.
“I declined to respond with the awe the news shows told us to feel because I didn't want to see anything going well for Nixon.”
Well, I guess you showed him.
You do remember the moon shot was Kennedy’s idea? The guy who beat Nixon by being more telegenic, and then got us into the Vietnam war?
Allied attrition through ideological dysphoria.
"Political people had to barge to the forefront and tell us how to feel."
That's terrible. Especially when there were entertainers eager to do the same thing.
The moon is dreamy like jfk.jr
"Dark rhetoric" sounds Diversitist. The kind deployed, employed by racists. WaPout?
Back in the day, I couldn't have imagined rooting against Apollo because of "Nixon".
The euphoria...directly connected to our ambivalence about...."
I grow less and less inclined to read anything wherein the author presumes to assign emotions, attitudes, opinions, or beliefs to the reader. Do it without first person plural, Kennicott.
His hot takes are not very
If it hadn't been framed as a "race", I doubt we would have made it to the moon. It provided a deadline. It's too bad, but that's the way people work.
And nixon had been part of the space council as vp
"It's too bad, but that's the way people work."
This is a problem for progressives. They often don't like the way people work and insist that they ought to work in ways that are more acceptable to progressive sensibilities and demands.
See: Socialism, and its results when its application is insisted upon.
Progressives care more about intent than results.
I felt that the criticism was piling on.
@boatbuilder, if you read military histories you will see that Carter earned everything that came his way. Problem number one is that once word spread that a rescue mission was being planned every branch of the military wanted in on it and the result was a plan that was unnecessarily complex. Hopefully you’re sophisticated enough to know that the main thing to add to a plan or design is simplicity, not more things that can go wrong.
More seriously, Carter allowed Secretary of State Cyrus Vance to push back the execution date of the military operation in favor of fruitless efforts to negotiate hostage release through the PLO (which had negligible influence with the Iranian mullahs). Consequently Operation Eagle Claw took place during haboob season, when the sort of dust storm that wrecked the operation was more likely to occur than not. After the fiasco was over Vance resigned in protest, but it’s not as though he was on anything resembling a path to success with negotiations.
Carter was a disaster. Reagan sold Iran arms after getting 240 marines killed in Beirut. Obama gave them billions.
Trump killed Irans leaders.
A few tow missiles against the vast arsenal that iraq has been provided
Big Mike--I was 19 years old and not a military strategist. My point was that my initial response was to root for the home team, even though I didn't like the manager.
Oh, for fuck's sake- anyone who feared Trump was going to nuke Iran last night isn't worth a single second of a rational person's time.
Trump's going to nuke Iran!!!!!! Squeeeeee.
(Trump doesn't nuke Iran)
TACO!!!!!!!!! Squeeeeee
A three-year-old has more perspective than these idiots.
Female aesthetic preferences.
"Were we conned by 'the symbolic power of winning the race to the moon'?
Could be. You were definitely conned by Woodstock, were you not?
"After the fiasco was over Vance resigned in protest, but it’s not as though he was on anything resembling a path to success with negotiations."
President Jimmuh was one huge fiasco. Anyone with a lick of discernment could see it coming like a runaway freight train the moment Carter showed up carrying a garment bag over his shoulder.
@boatbuilder, two different things. I did not — and never would — root against the US of A, but that’s different from saying that Eagle Claw failed because of weak leadership in the White House. Imagine a manager pulling a hitter who averages .385 against the guy on the mound in favor of a sub-200 pinch hitter.
The apocryphal rabbit told us
Grok says US combat deaths were 4200 in 1970, down from 9400 in '69, which was down from the peak of 14,600 in '68. Your worries about your friends weren't baseless, but our role was already winding down. Less than 3500 died in Iraq 2003-2010. We've become spoiled, sort of.
I went over to see the launch with a 15 year old friend driving his mom's T-Bird. Then watched the landing at a kid's house who moved to Tampa when his dad got a job doing camera stiff at a local TV station. The dad got like totally irate about the lander's lousy cameras. Woodstock is the one that had the great pr. 3 days crowded in the mud and the crud. Few weeks later I had lunch with a sister in a Pentagon cafeteria.
She left for college I was watching Combat. Still watching during her breaks. At lunch I asked how could she work for these people.
but screwed Israel in October’73.
The Arab oil embargo due to our rearming them was just a dream.
I know we watched the landing, but the splashdown and Nixon's visit to their quarantine stick in my mind more, I guess because that looked real to me at 8. Likewise, the first shuttle landing more than its takeoff.
1933 - whats all this fuss and nonsense about Foreign affairs - what about the depression.
1938 - Hitler. fascism on the march OMG.
1946 - Whats all this fuss about stalin? He's uncle Joe.
1950 - OMG, Korea. the UN must do something.
1965 - Cold War. Vietnam. Who cares? what about civil rights?
1973 - OMG israel is in danger!
1981 - Evil Empire? Give me a break.
1991 - Kuwait is in danger. OMG. Kuwait!
2001 - We must fight the war on terror.
2003 - WMD's - the war of civilizations.
2016 - America First. Lets build a wall.
2022 - OMG, Putin is trying to conquer the world!!
2023 - OMG, Israel attacked
2026 - OMG, Iran has missiles. They must be destroyed.
Casting "Going to the moon" as some sort of Cold war contest was just an excuse. We needed to go to the moon because it was there. Teddy Roosevelt said something like "I started the Panama Canal. And while the critics debate me, the Canal is there".
And today all naysayers and sarcastic dweebs like Dylan seem like petty half-men. We went to the Moon and that's all that matters.
I watched the landing with my college girlfriend and her friend, while helping the friend stuff envelopes with "French ticklers" (colored feathers that prospective recipients thought were something else). Customers were prodded to buy these ridiculous items by suggestive ads in men's magazines (the cheap ones). It seemed a very odd juxtaposition to what we were watching on the television screen; the very best and worst of humankind together....
I was at a vacation camp in France with my old college roommate when the Carter "hostage rescue" failed. A British fellow camper came over to us and asked "Do you know what your idiot Carter just did?" He was no widely respected in Europe.
I was getting ready to go to kindergarten that summer. I remember going to my aunt and uncle's house to watch, because they had color television. Of course all the moon footage was black and white, but I got to hang out with my cousins during the boring parts.
Lucien,
> [Nixon] did well with China
I disagree--that was when we had the most leverage over China, and the price of admission should have been that they repudiate their One China policy. China gets recognized, but we still recognize Taiwan. China gets a seat in the general assembly, but Taiwan gets to keep theirs - - no different than East and West Germany.
Granted, China might well have refused, but in that case let them rot in isolation. We would be better off today with either of those scenarios than what we have now
Not me. I was 11. Expecting to go to Vietnam in 7 years, or 11 if I went to college first. I had also recently read Heinlein's The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, and was beyond excited as the grainy footage came it.
I remember the Moon landing quite well. I was 13. My parents worked for Lockeed, the Landing was a big deal. My Stepfather went out the next day and bought several copies of the LA Times. I also remember quite well the Draft lottery as 2 of my brothers were over 18. It was the 60's. In 1974 I registered for the Selective Service. I too was given a draft lottery number.
It's amazing how the LeftMedia can tie Trump into any history now. Losers.
I am the moom!
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