It is a testament to our broken political system and our jaded public that Armstrong was overshadowed by the bloviating of one of our political parties, cowering to the demands of the super-wealthy and denying the humanity and seemingly, the right to exist, for people of color, women, and any number of those who were born without privilege. President Clinton said it best:
"My fellow Americans, all of us in this grand hall and everybody watching at home, when we vote in this election, we'll be deciding what kind of country we want to live in," he said. "If you want a winner-take-all, you're-on-your-own society, you should support the Republican ticket. But if you want a country of shared opportunities and shared responsibility, a we're-all-in-this-together society, you should vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden."
I find it anathema that some in our country in the 21st century still are reluctant to admit that we live in a shared society, with shared responsibilities, privileges, hopes, and dreams. Whether or not the super-wealthy want to admit it, we are all tied together in a community. As much as they try to extract themselves from the responsibilities of public life - by enrolling their children in private schools with other of similar socioeconomic status, by lobbying politicians to entrench their privilege in legislation even more than it already is, by ruthlessly exploiting the labour of the underclasses while simultaneously catering to the xenophobia espoused by right-wing demagogues and right-wing Christianity. I cannot for the life of my fathom why the economic policies of the Republican party should make sense to any one - tax breaks for the rich have no basis in economic research that show that this policy "trickles down" to the middle- and lower classes. Rather, the super-wealthy instead spend their money on yachts, Gulfstreams, and secret their money away in the Caymans, Bermuda, or Switzerland. It is appalling to me, on a human level, that these people pound their chests and wave their American flags while they do everything they can to exploit and demean those beneath them and deem it "the American way."
But I digress. What I meant to speak of was the death of the space program. It is so exciting to think that we landed men on the moon on a craft with the computing power of a modern calculator. In the 1970s, we launched a craft that has left our solar system, and to my knowledge is still reporting useful data on the void beyond. We landed an SUV-size craft on Mars, which was one of the most exciting NASA accomplishments of my lifetime.
Yet there remains so much to be done, if only we had the gumption to continue to explore and invest in science. I work in public education, and the recent transition to a focus on STEM learning is to be lauded. I sincerely hope that our next generation of astronauts are today in our public schools, ablaze with the passion and wonder to explore. It is appalling to me that we spend trillions of dollars on war while we invest almost nothing (comparatively speaking) in NASA, which has provided humankind with constant milestones in human achievement. There is nothing more inspiring than space, and I wish that we as a society would return to an investment in science and exploration.
