Friends, although it may not be at the top of the news, this first story is a humdinger. You may be inclined to scoff at it, but I believe President Trump deserves credit for understanding the importance of space not just to America's future, but to the future of our species. It's symbolic that Barack Obama killed the space shuttle, and temporarily throttled our manned space program, but Donald Trump is breathing new life into it. We may not be building death stars anytime soon, but a "Space Force" is definitely on the horizon. In many ways, we already have one -- it's just a function of the Air Force at the present time. Keep your eyes pointed heavenward, because we're going to see some amazing accomplishments in space in the next generation. Trump won't be responsible for all of them -- the private sector is also pitching in -- but he is leading the way.
https://www.nbc4i.com/news/u-s-world/pres-trump-tells-pentagon-to-create-space-force/1246735543
Lastly, some of you may be wondering what's going on at the border -- are we really separating children from their parents, and why? The short answer is that, yes, many children of illegal immigrants are being separated from their Moms and/or Dads, but that's because the Trump administration is choosing to apply the law to illegal immigrants and prosecute them for illegally crossing the border. The Democrats say, "Psh! That's a choice, you monster. We never would have done that." Touche! It's true: Democrats would simply have ignored that law, as they ignore so many others when it suits them. Can you imagine the flood of illegal immigration we would be dealing with if Hillary had won??? It beggars belief. At least the Trump administration is TRYING to discourage and punish this illegal form of migration. I applaud their efforts to do so.
These three articles might help you to form an accurate picture of what's going on at the border. As you will see, the truth is not all that CNN and MSNBC would have you believe.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/06/18/president_trump_the_united_states_will_not_be_a_migrant_camp.html
https://abcnews.go.com/US/homeland-security-chief-slams-irresponsible-reports-separation-migrant/story?id=55968436
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/5/8/17327512/sessions-illegal-immigration-border-asylum-families
Dr. Waddy: I didn't know he had proposed a space force but its yet another indication that President Trump has his head on straight. I remember Obama having enjoined NASA to improve relations with Islam and having lauded a someday manned expedition to an asteroid. I can just imagine President Kennedy saying"we choose to go to the moon, not because it easy but because we wish to get along better with those who dislike us. My objective is to launch a ball bearing into lunar proximity by the end of this decade!" Yes, scientists do see benefit to be derived from the exploration of asteroids but its plainly a goal with far less impact than returning to the moon or going to Mars and beyond and America disparaging Obama knew that. Meanwhile, the next men on the moon may well be Chinese. Military priorities, as are implied by the term "space force", have in the past, in response to the fears we had of the military dangers posed by the early Russian lead in space, yielded knowledge indispensable in our subsequent space successes (manned predominantly by military personnel and veterans like Gene Kranz, the Flight Director of many of the Apollo missions). The Chinese are very sensitive to the tragic effect that Western military technology, advanced beyond theirs beginning in the 17th century, had on their history in the 19th century. They will be proactive in ensuring that this never recurs and that includes space technology. The President is wise to recommit us to vigorous effort in space.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: Some salient points risen either in the articles or your commentary: Democrat obstructionism - here we see in sharp relief the fruit of Schumer/ Pelosi scorched earth. Don't like what the law mandates and which this administration has the temerity to enforce? Then do what a minority must do in a democracy -grow up, swallow your gorge and work with the GOP to enact more humane laws.
ReplyDeleteCriminals who use children in any way are sociopathic. Separation of children from monsters posing as their parents is of course beneficial to the children and keeps some of the very worst kind of criminal out of our country.
The tactic of crossing illegally and then presenting oneself to the Border Patrol as seekers of asylum, must be discredited. The Trump administration's insistence on enforcement honors those who have complied with it in seeking residence here and reinforces a rule of law which leftists characteristically scorn at their pleasure.
Jack, your comments re: the rule of law at the border echo my own views. Sad to say, but we are now fighting against a Democratic Party that seems to sincerely believe that the law doesn't apply to people it likes -- but it applies with special vigor to scumbags who support or share the family name of "Trump". It makes me wonder what sort of Clinton Star Chamber would have been formed to root out evildoers like you and me if Hillary had (perish the thought) won in 2016...
ReplyDeleteYou make a great point that the benefits of the space race went far beyond knowledge of space itself. The military applications of satellites, rockets, computers, digital communications, powerful telescopes, etc. were crucial, but the civilian applications have been even more revolutionary. This very blog would probably be inconceivable without the "spillover" from NASA. I'm no Kennedy fan, by and large, but he dreamed big in terms of space, and I thank him for it.
Dr. Waddy: Hillary's fevered lifelong struggle to obtain ultimate power, would, at her age, driven her to use it in a manner decisive and vindictive in the extreme. That she would have politicized any government entity with coercive power is certain.
ReplyDeleteI'm no Kennedy fan myself but he did manage to motivate what was, in many ways, a heroic effort in the race to the moon. In inspiring pride in America it was a vital counterweight to those who saw in the '60's an opportunity to take us down for good and who would have cited Russian moon landing pioneers as proof of our fundamental inferiority to Marxism. They could well have infected far more of the young and impressionable of the time.
I think you're right, Jack, that it was important that we win the race to the moon, partly because we had come second in so many other important space endeavors. Communism never had much to recommend it, but its prestige was never greater than in 1945 (with the defeat of Nazi Germany) and 1957-61 (with Sputnik and Gagarin). The Apollo missions and the space shuttle helped to take the wind out of their sails, and since ultimately it was their own flagging confidence that beat them in the Cold War, well, space mattered!!!
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: Great point, I'm sure it did help to convince them that they could never, despite impoverishing their long suffering populace to do so, beat a free, democratic and powerful U.S. While we are on the subject, please let me also express my conviction that our effort in Vietnam did not go to waste. I think it also showed the Soviets (who do know and perhaps respect rugged, courageous endurance) that we are also made of that stuff. They know it was their ideological shills in the U.S. which caused us to quit and they could see by 1991 that it wasn't going to be allowed to happen again. Desert Storm helped to convince them of that, I think.
ReplyDeleteJack, I concur that Vietnam was not a wasted effort. The communists won there, yes, but at tremendous cost, and if nothing else we kept the communist behemoth busy there for two decades, so that it couldn't turn its gaze elsewhere, at least not with the same level of focus and energy. My own opinion is, if there is one "proxy war" that determined the outcome of the Cold War, though, it would be Afghanistan circa 1979-89. That really put the Reds on their heels at a critical juncture.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: Ditto on Afghanistan. It all added up for the Soviets by 1991; good thing they didn't have a suicidal madman at the helm like Germany did in 1945.
ReplyDeleteYes, national (actually global) suicide would have been an alternative to surrender for the Soviets. Then again, staying the course was a very viable alternative. Even today, Russia has all the nukes necessary to keep us at bay indefinitely. The amazing thing is that they CHOSE to forfeit their empire. We can thank them for their charity!
ReplyDeleteDr. WaddY: It was a miracle, I think.
ReplyDeleteFunnily enough, I think we may have to credit the mind-rotting qualities of American pop culture, as much as the edifying qualities of democracy and freedom, for the Soviet collapse. The counterculture of the 60s, which is now the dominant culture of the 21st century, has a great knack for toppling things and tearing down venerable traditions. I suspect, as soon as the apparatchiks heard the first strains of rock and roll, their goose was cooked!
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: I don't doubt the corrosive influence of our sometimes debauched pop culture on countries all over the world. I saw a very definite reaction to it in Singapore, where I was a student in 1973. They were and perhaps still are firmly convinced that it could destroy their society (chiefly with tolerance of drugs and crime) and they took action against it which would not be possible in a Western country. By the late '80's, Russian civilization was dissolving under the weight of the there universally understood lie of Marxism and was very vulnerable to Western culture in many forms. Compared to the viciously artificial and fundamentally inhuman modus vivendi which had been forced (in unspeakable tragedy on those who had lived since 1917) on them, it was a blessing.
ReplyDeleteTo pivot from our other line of conversation, the world doesn't just face the dichotomy of Marxism versus democracy/freedom/capitalism -- it also faces the choice of order versus chaos. It seems to me that the "values" inherent in our popular culture are largely those of chaos. Now, everyone enjoys a bit of chaos now and then, and in a dictatorship it probably comes as a huge relief, but I still prefer order and a society based on a time-tested set of principles and customs at the end of the day. In that sense, I'm a conservative, not a classical liberal. My fear is that the nihilism of current elite culture is leading us down a dark path that may ultimately be...even worse than Soviet communism, if you can imagine that.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: I've never been able to figure out what generated the nihilism which is such a major factor in our popular culture and its very consequential social and political consequences. I think I know why young Brits were that way, with all their "angry young man" stuff in the late '50's and early '60's. They were completely frazzled by the privations of WWII and its aftermath (heck, they hadn't come close to recovering from WWI, the defining event of the 20th century, I think, in 1939). And they did have an obvious influence on our elephantine baby boomer generation. But you can see the negativism portrayed much earlier than that in "Rebel Without a Cause". I remember my college classmates in 1966 enthusiastically reacting to The Animals' "We Gotta Get Outa This Place". Most of us were in a great place at that time. Campus life sure beat Tarawa or Vietnam. The later degradation of some '60's phenomena ( and I saw some of its most disturbing manifestations in the things some prison inmates sought to possess - it just can't get much worse) shames our culture but may well be a price which must be paid for blessed freedom. But chaos is celebrated by much of our pop culture (mostly by people who have never really experienced it)and I still can't figure why that is. I think you are right in perhaps proposing that a time may come when there will be reaction to this which is draconian indeed. Democracy really is a continuing experiment and though the results may not all be favorable, the remedies may be much worse.
ReplyDeleteHear hear, Jack! We should always be careful about trashing the status quo, because what replaces it could be far worse. I'm sure the Russians who badmouthed the Czar circa 1916 were under the impression that ANY change had to be good. Yeah, right!!!
ReplyDeleteNihilism is a very difficult concept to understand. Why would anyone choose it? Why would anyone promote it? Frankly, I don't buy the "privations of WWII" excuse. Humanity has endured far worse, and without any resort to nihilism. It's a very modern disease, or so it seems. My guess would be that nihilism fulfills a repressed human longing for self-destruction, and perhaps destruction in general, which has always been there. Previous generations, though, had the good sense to ignore it, stifle it, or redirect it outwards. In the last century or so, the "I just gotta be me" philosophy seems to have given this drivel a currency and respectability that it never had before. Probably the decline of religion is also closely related.
Anyway, I don't care for nihilism one bit. People should never forget that it is much easier to destroy than it is to create. Civilizations are incubated over centuries, even millennia. They can be obliterated in the blink of an eye.
Dr. Waddy: I saw the beginning of such a precipitous decline from 1965 to 1967 on campus though it pales in comparison to the decline of a civilization. The letter sweater and fraternity and sorority people, who had been a fixture of college life for decades, were driven right underground (or so I understand from those who remained on campus after I bailed out). It was shocking.
ReplyDeleteJack, where I went to College (Washington and Lee), Greek life was thriving in the 90s. To be honest, though, fraternities and sororities seemed far more dedicated to drinking than to defending the timeless verities of Western Civilization. I'd like to think priorities were different in your day. Were they?
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: I don't think they were. Actually the film Animal House is an accurate depiction of the ambience of 1965 college life. Perhaps that relative innocence was a good thing though. Perhaps college should be a time for learning a wide range of ideas rather than acting, sometimes prematurely, on some of them.
ReplyDeleteOn another subject, I realize that I misspoke in one sense when I downgraded the "impact" of exploring asteroids. It could prevent a very appreciable "impact".
True, Jack -- asteroids have a lot of potential. For mining purposes, they're very promising, I hear...
ReplyDeleteYes, college students probably are better off drinking and partying than manning the barricades for leftist gurus. Beer first, utopia later!
Dr. Waddy: Agreed. Also I forgot to say, I thought your analysis of modern nihilism to be very well thought out.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Jack! I assure you -- it's anything but. I honestly haven't a clue why civilization has jumped the rails so thoroughly in the last couple hundred years, and more especially in the last five decades. We really are outliers. Maybe it's caffeine? Birth control pills? High fructose corn syrup? Honestly, I wish it were one of those things. That would make it a snap to fix!
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: In the '50's there was much concern about what was thought to be the injection in our drinking water of flouride, ostensibly to preserve our teeth (dentists - did it work on boomers?). This must be considered as a decisive factor.
ReplyDeleteHa! I remember the plague of fluoride was mentioned in Dr. Strangelove. Who knows. Maybe there is a chemical cause of present-day insanity. My own view, which I've alluded to before, is that the receding fear of death causes a great deal of irrational and selfish behavior, but then I'm no philosopher/psychologist...
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: " The receding fear of death" - there is much to that. In the 18th century in Britain and America it was commonly accepted by parents that they would lose half their children before maturity. I.E. they were privy to pain in its most excruciating emotional form. They developed psychological defenses against this pain which were hard to overcome by the medical advances of the 19th and 20th centuries. The recession of the causes of this agony were, when realized, welcome but those old barriers to sorrow were hard to overcome. I say this only as a matter of fact but the exquisite pain generated by even the possibility of the loss of a child can probably only be fully appreciated and abjectly feared, by a parent. It may well be that the blessed alleviation of much of this dread ( even as late as the early 1950s, when I lived through the freeing of parents from their hatred of summer for its specter of polio), induced much unanticipated neuroses, both in the parents and their baby boom children.
ReplyDeleteWhat an interesting perspective, Jack. You're right -- one could draw a pretty crisp line between the age in which parents had to contend with the likelihood of the loss of several children, and the age (the last 60-70 years) when they no longer do. Your theory that, as old worries recede, new neuroses crop up to replace them, is fascinating. Above my pay grade, psychologically speaking, but it makes a certain amount of sense. What do you make of the fact, then, that parents today can rest easy that their children will survive to adulthood, BUT they seem paranoid about all dangers and threats, however minor? "Helicopter parents" are a relatively recent phenomenon, no? Maybe it has something to do with having a lot fewer children. Or maybe people today are just so unaccustomed to pain and adversity that they can't bear the thought of it.
ReplyDelete