Category: Uncategorized

Ad Astra Per Aspera

I’m nervous about what might happen to the Space Program. My fear is that we’ll pull back–chastened by the disaster, attention drawn elsewhere by security issues, growing financially conservative due to the economy….and maybe even assigning blame to NASA for missing warning signs. This could be it. Figure out a way to get the International Space Station crew home, put the chairs on the tables, and turn out the lights.

That’s my fear.

I’ve always dreamed of space travel, since I was a child. Dreams of a career as an astronaut were scuttled fairly early on by a lack of interest in math, and a realization that there wasn’t room in a cockpit for a tall guy. However, I never lost the attachment to the dream. As a people, though, we seemed to stop looking outward…we stopped caring about what’s out there. We seemed to lose our spirit of exploration.

That’s what I want back. That’s what I wanted to hear from Bush yesterday. Hearing him say that the work will continue was heartening…but I want more. I want to hear “this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.” Or Mars. Or anything.

We need the President to kick Congress in the ass, shake the money tree, and re-fire our spirit of exploration. Tap into that fire that drew us all together after 9/11. If we’re going to try to lead the world (and our foreign policy seems to speak to a certain desire for Hegemony), then let’s lead it for the best reasons, as well as for the worst. Let’s show the world that we can answer the brutality of backwards-looking fanaticism not just with reciprocal violence, but also by rising above it to further the advances of all of humanity–because we can.

We’re the only ones who can, and it’s time not only for us to remember that, but time for us to remind everyone else as well.

GMS

Columbia

Just the other day, I was telling my daughter what it was like to see the Challenger destroyed, back in 1986.

Now, she knows.

I’m not going to talk about the event itself. Thousands of bloggers are doing that. I’m going to talk about something surrounding this event that is making me sick: propaganda.

I turned off the coverage early this afternoon, after Dan Rather read “reactions from Iraq” over the air. It was the usual bullshit– they were glad that the accident happened….this was God’s retribution against the US …the fact that the Columbia disintegrated over Bush’s home state is proof of God’s anger, etc.

My question: What the hell was the point of that? Why did we need to hear that? What purpose did it serve, other than to rile the passions of the American people? That’s not news. It’s propaganda.

I just now turned on NBC, and listened to the wrap-up of the day’s events. The anchor, just minutes ago as I write this, compared the astronauts to the “brave patriots who are flying off the deck of aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf.” I’m not kidding.

I cannot believe what has happened to my country.

GMS

What a week.

I meant to post an update several times this week, but by the time I got home from work, I was so wiped out that nothing more strenuous than eating dinner and sitting in front of the TV seemed do-able.

Very rough week at work. Several major assignments, which, naturally, piled up due to various external factors made for constant beginning-to-end marathon work days. Got the jobs finished at around 4 this afternoon, and spent the next hour listening to the knots in my back unclench before heading out the door at 5 on the dot, for the first time in ages.

This weekend will be spent

a) sleeping late

b) working on the new approach to Apollyon Noir

and c) fighter practice on Sunday (this’ll be the first time in about 6 months that I’ve donned the armor, so I’m looking forward to it.)

Now, for something that will FREAK YOU OUT.

The following is an exerpt from pages 203 and 204 of Larry Beinhart’s American Hero…a book written in 1993.

Beagle wrote a note on a yellow pad: “Scenario: The president is kidnapped by terrorists.”

This had a certain appeal. Beagle had learned not to let his imagination be incarcerated by cost or practicality. Still, it seemed to him that with this reality shit, getting the cooperation of a foreign country prepared to enter into a war with the United States, with the United States scripted to win, might be difficult. But having the president participate in, or fake, his own kidnapping would be a piece of cake. How could he refuse? It was all being done for the benefit of his reelection.

Then the waiting. The drama of not knowing. Whip the country into hysteria. Then the ransom demands. Do we bow to ransom? Do we stand on principle? Millions for defense, not one red cent for tribute! The negotiations. Deliberately dragged out. While, secretly, the Delta Force (or Navy Seals, or Vegas Bimbos or even the FBI) is maneuvering to burst in on them and they rescue Bush in a perfectly timed and executed …

What a thought! Have the terrorists execute Bush! Then Dan Quayle becomes president, declares War on Terrorism. Not like the War-on-Drugs war. But real war where we go in and obliterate entire cities. Search and destroy. If they want to hide in Libya, invade Libya. Syria. Anywhere they tried to hide!

Obviously, the client was not going to go for that. Bush had to stay alive. But that’s what he needed — an incident that would kick the whole affair into higher gear. If the Delta Force rescued the president, then what? Then it becomes a police matter. Measured force. Investigations, waiting, arrests, and years later — long after Bush won or lost his reelection — a trial. Probably in Italy, where the terrorists would only get 10 years anyway and then be traded to Libya after 18 months for a boatload of oil and support for the lira. Or would the American public be outraged enough — that is to say, could the American public be whipped up to a sufficient frenzy — that they would be willing to go to war?

What if they took Bush and Quayle? Delta Force rescues Bush, but the terrorists kill Quayle.

That was a happening concept.

Bush, in anger and grief, leads the nation — the nations, plural, of the West — in a Holy Crusade against terrorism. So that no wife need grieve like Madilyn? (Marilyn? he made a note to check). So that no child (he was sure Quayle had children) would be left fatherless, ever again. …

The terrorists would be Muslims. The Backward forces of Superstition and Repression of the East against the Rational, Ethical, Forward-looking West. It tapped into atavistic hatred. Christians against Moslems! There it was — the project title — The Crusades.

Say it with me now: HO-LEE SHE-IT.

GMS