One Small Step For A Couple Of Privileged White Males

This is the golden anniversary of possibly the greatest physical and scientific achievement in the history of mankind, when two Americans walked the surface of a heavenly body and returned to Earth safely with specimens from its landscape. Those moon rocks were then shared by America with the other nations of the world.

But had Apollo 11 happened today, 50 years after it actually did, it would be viewed by our political, media and academic elites as a bigoted outrage.

“One small step” for whom, exactly? A man? What about women? What about non-white men? What right did some white U.S. naval officer from western Ohio such as Neil Armstrong have to speak for all of humanity?

For that matter, what about non-humanity? Has the space program ever atoned for all the sufferings of the various species of animals non-consensually sent into orbit to make sure space was safe for the white men? Were any of our feathered co-inhabitants in this world of ours consulted when the decision was made to name the lunar lander “Eagle”?

And how appalling that when these privileged Caucasian chauvinists disembarked from their $25 billion spacecraft, financed on the backs of the world’s poor, what they unfurled and planted in the lunar dust wasn’t the olive branches and soothing blue and white of the United Nations flag, but that notoriously divisive, oppressive symbol of hate, the Stars and Stripes.

The real people’s leaders of today, such as purple-haired U.S. women’s soccer team co-captain Megan Rapinoe, who last Sunday was begged to run for elective office on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” don’t honor Old Glory, as Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did five decades ago. In her 21^st century broad-mindedness, Rapinoe kneels in brooding defiance, or stands but pointedly refuses to place her hand on her heart.

Moreover, victoriously reaching the moon was a “giant leap” not for the people of the world but for the imperialist capitalists waging a decades-long, nuclear-armed Cold War – both in the heavens and in the rice paddies of Vietnam – against the workers’ paradise of the Soviet Union.

NASA sent 12 lily-white men to the moon from 1969 to 1972. Did any of them ever do anything to address gravity inequality? Earth owns six times the gravity of the moon.

Can you imagine a president of the United States today not being slammed for declaring, “for every American this has to be the proudest day of our lives,” as Nixon did in his phone call to the moon?

Imagine if a president today, oozing with colonialist condescension, dared to suggest the unity of the citizens of the globe by adding, “And for people all over the world. I am sure they too join with Americans in recognizing what an immense feat this is.”

Belying the obvious military designs underlying our conquest of the moon, warmongering Nixon also hypocritically told his spacefaring fellow white males, “because of what you have done, the heavens have become a part of man’s world. And as you talk to us from the Sea of Tranquility, it inspires us to redouble our efforts to bring peace and tranquility to earth.”

Nixon even insulted the multitudes forswearing religious faith, asserting that “for one priceless moment in the whole history of man, all the people on this Earth are truly one: one in their pride in what you have done, and one in our prayers that you will return safely to Earth.”

Seas of tranquility are fine for airless deserts a quarter of a million miles away. Here on Mother Earth we need the taxpayers’ billions to pursue greater priorities, such as our struggles over skin color, the sexes, government redistribution of wealth, and the policing of hate speech.

— Written by Thomas McArdle

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