Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Kennedy appeared to be the imperial spawn and fulfillment of Cecil Rhodes who declared:

"To think of these stars that you see overhead at night, these vast worlds which we can never reach. I would annex the planets if I could; I often think of that. It makes me sad to see them so clear and yet so far."

Watch it there, Smiff; you're talking to a guy whose Inner Little Boy™ still wants to be an astronaut when he grows up. The little sucker dragged me down to the Folklife Festival at the Mall yesterday so he could sit in the T-38 cockpit and try on some spacesuit gloves and talk to a real astronaut.

But, seriously, folks... JFK's speech couldn't have been nearly as bad as Cecil Rhodes. That's a pretty galling remark, that Rhodes quote. Don't forget, JFK's speeches at Rice U. and to Congress made a big deal out of doing something "in full view of the world", that all humanity could share, and all that jazz.

Granted, he's Mattress Jack (remember, he got to nail Marilyn and you didn't); still, you have to admit that in the context of the time, it was the right speech at the right time given by the right guy, despite it seeming quaint and bombastic today. I mean, c'mon; can you imagine if Nixon had won in '60, and had the job of inspiring our engineers and manufacturers and test pilots and scientists to beat the Rooskies to the Moon? Can you imagine Nixon trying to give a speech like that back then? We never would've made it to the Moon; hell, we never would've made it into Earth orbit.

Aside from his actual politics and modern pwogwessives' irrational crush on the guy, JFK really was the right man at the right time for something like that; let's face it, Nixon would've had all the inspirational vibe of a small puddle of creosote then.

I'll readily admit here, though, that I was all of four or five years old at the time that speech was given, and am looking at it through the eyes of someone who didn't actually hear the speech and comprehend it until the age of ten or eleven, well into the Apollo program, at the time that I and 99% of young boys in this country wanted to be astronauts when we grew up.

Lately, though, when I watch this speech, it's with a kind of bittersweet feeling in a lot of ways, not the least of which is that feeling that this nation hasn't done jack shit to make me proud or inspired since the last Apollo crew came home, in 1972, when I was fifteen.

What pisses me even more royally, though, is when I consider the behavior of the DP during the Clinton Years and after -- basically, tossing out principles in favor of the crowd-pleaser and the easy win -- measured against one of the most powerful moments of the JFK speech,

...We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.

I recall those words today, and all I can think of is the goddamn' Democrats avoiding taking the hard positions, the positions that need to be taken and which require a modicum of actual courage, and instead taking the easy way out, cutting and running and caving and backing down and compromising -- like our modern so-called anti-war Democrats, not even bothering to take a stand in Congress because, they whine, "...we don't have the votes."

Considering all this -- and with all respect to Gene Kranz -- perhaps the Democrats should adopt the motto "Failure Is An Option".

O yeah, Mike, I loved all that stuff when I was a kid too. I'd still take a ride in the space shuttle if there was a 50% chance of coming back alive. And I still like to read science fiction -- a thoroughly depraved taste, of course.

But the thing that strikes me now, watching Kennedy bluster about the conquest of space, is how fatuous and delusional it all was. This, after all, was a guy who couldn't even conquer the Vietnamese.

Big Smiff writes:

..I'd still take a ride in the space shuttle if there was a 50% chance of coming back alive...

geek mode ON
In spite of two high-profile accidents -- don't forget what JFK said about taking our risks in front of the whole world, at a time when Da Rooskies were hemming and hawing and fibbing massively about their failures -- your odds of surviving a ride to orbit and back aboard STS are actually fairly better than 50%. Soyuz has been flying for nearly half a century but, in its early service life, killed at least as many crews (two) as Apollo or STS.
geek mode OFF

And I still like to read science fiction -- a thoroughly depraved taste, of course.

Nahh, don't be ashamed. Science fiction is one of my favorite literary vehicles for imagining a better world, for imagining what's on "the other side", for cautionary tales. Kubrick's 2001 is one of my favorite "period pieces" -- except it happens to be set in The Future.

But the thing that strikes me now, watching Kennedy bluster about the conquest of space, is how fatuous and delusional it all was. This, after all, was a guy who couldn't even conquer the Vietnamese.

geek mode ON
The USAF's been horny for its own manned spaceflight capability since forever, even after having been shown several times how much more efficiently surveillance, intel, verification, etc. could be done robotically than with manned craft, but it seems like every generation there's a new round of proposals and skunkworks prototypes and really cool concept art for things like trans-atmospheric single-seat fighters and boost-glide bombers and satellite interceptors. It's as if the whole space/advanced concepts wing of the USAF started with a bunch of guys who'd read too many Hugo Gernsback magazines and was passed down to the hands of a generation of guys who'd been to too many Star Wars movies, and passed down again to the hands of a generation that's seen too many episodes of Stargate SG-1.
geek mode OFF

Even while JFK was stabbing his podium at Rice University, the USAF's boost-glide spaceplane was failing to get off the drawing board, let alone the launch pad and, in spite of that, the USAF later agitated for a piece of Project Gemini to service their planned manned orbiting intel/surveillance space station. Ironically, much of this was shot down by the escalating cost of failing to conquer the Vietnamese.

What seems especially goofy, looking back, is how much this country shit its pants at the idea of Da Rooskies orbiting a satellite roughly the size of a basketball. That whole Missile Gap™ scam sounds even lamer now than it was then when you consider that, imho, we also had launch vehicles capable of orbiting several basketballs at once.

As far as the old-school bluster goes, I suppose that looking back nearly fifty years -- almost as long as I've been alive -- the whole sound and style and feel of the thing sounds as silly and flowery and corny as old recordings of FDR and Hoover speeches must've sounded to people in '61. Still, for a steaming heap of rancid naivete and vapor, you need go no further than Barack Obombirana's keynote speech to the 2004 Donkeycratic Convention. Absolutely breathtaking. I've got an .mp3. (;^>

Since when was going to the moon "hard?"

It was two things, both astoundingly easy:

1. a way of expanding public spending on the military-industrial corporations' wares;

2. creation of a wildly-successful new "hi-tech" flagpole/nationalism booster.

Why this secret vault of Kennedy affection?

Hard would have been not waiting until August 1963 to make the first tiny gesture of non-hostility to the CRM.

Hard would've been firing J. Edgar.

Hard would have been accepting Fidel's offer of friendship.

Hard would've been ending, rather than progressively expanding, the Vietnam crime.

Well, I'd assumed everyone understood we're talking about "hard" in a logistics and engineering sense. Everything done then -- including things considered unremarkable now -- was being done for the first time; Kennedy's speech was sort of like the guy who stands in front of the huge line of covered wagons and buckboards and fires the pistol that signals "they're off" in the Oklahoma land rush.

In a policy sense, though, yeah; compared to canning Hoover, reconciling with Castro and bailing out of Vietnam, the decision to launch a manned orbital/lunar exploration program -- as complex as it was -- was a relative piece of cake.

Mind you, MD, I've got no secret cache of JFK admiration; I've long quit fooling myself about the guy. Had I been old enough to comprehend what was going on, I'd have thought all that "Camelot" business was totally whacked. When I consider JFK solely by his record, it really makes me gag to think of all the pwogwessive types who gush all over him. Kick-starting our ability to leave the planet really was pretty much his only positive accomplishment... oh, yeah, and nailing Marilyn Monroe.

Yes, it's a silly speech.

A much better speech was Kennedy's change of heart on the Moon Race, delivered to the UN on September 20, 1963. He called for ending the race and making it a cooperative effort with the USSR. He also called for ending the Cold War and scaling back militarism. A few weeks later he signed an order to start the troop withdrawal from Viet Nam, a thousand to be out by the end of the year and the rest out by 1965. Obviously, that wasn't allowed to happen.

There's a credible "left" critique to be made of Kennedy, but what matters more is looking at what Allen Dulles, Curtis LeMay and their friends thought of him. Plus, JFK learned from some of his mistakes, refused to bomb Cuba in October 1962 and the military industrial complex couldn't tolerate that. At the moment JFK was removed from office, an envoy from the White House (Jean Daniel) was meeting with Castro in his office, discussing resuming diplomatic relations. When they heard the news, Castro said that it changed everything. No president since has dared to discuss normalizing US Cuban relations.

LBJ reversed the Viet Nam withdrawal order and we all know what happened after that.

---

Address to the General Assembly of the United Nations - President John F. Kennedy
New York - September 20th 1963

''Finally, in a field where the United States and the Soviet Union have a special capacity--in the field of space--there is room for new cooperation, for further joint efforts in the regulation and exploration of space. I include among these possibilities a joint expedition to the moon. Space offers no problems of sovereignty; by resolution of this Assembly, the members of the United Nations have foresworn any claim to territorial rights in outer space or on celestial bodies, and declared that international law and the United Nations Charter will apply. Why, therefore, should man's first flight to the moon be a matter of national competition? Why should the United States and the Soviet Union, in preparing for such expeditions, become involved in immense duplications of research, construction, and expenditure? Surely we should explore whether the scientists and astronauts of our two countries--indeed of all the world--cannot work together in the conquest of space, sending someday in this decade to the moon not the representatives of a single nation, but the representatives of all of our countries. ....''

"Never before has man had such capacity to control his own environment, to end thirst and hunger, to conquer poverty and disease, to banish illiteracy and massive human misery. We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world--or to make it the last."

-- President John F. Kennedy, September 20, 1963 speech to the UN calling for an end to the Cold War and converting the Moon Race into an international cooperative effort, two months and two days before he was removed from office.

http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Ready-Reference/JFK-Speeches/Address-Before-the-18th-General-Assembly-of-the-United-Nations-September-20-1963.aspx

Yes, it's a silly speech.

A much better speech was Kennedy's change of heart on the Moon Race, delivered to the UN on September 20, 1963. He called for ending the race and making it a cooperative effort with the USSR. He also called for ending the Cold War and scaling back militarism. A few weeks later he signed an order to start the troop withdrawal from Viet Nam, a thousand to be out by the end of the year and the rest out by 1965. Obviously, that wasn't allowed to happen.

There's a credible "left" critique to be made of Kennedy, but what matters more is looking at what Allen Dulles, Curtis LeMay and their friends thought of him. Plus, JFK learned from some of his mistakes, refused to bomb Cuba in October 1962 and the military industrial complex couldn't tolerate that. At the moment JFK was removed from office, an envoy from the White House (Jean Daniel) was meeting with Castro in his office, discussing resuming diplomatic relations. When they heard the news, Castro said that it changed everything. No president since has dared to discuss normalizing US Cuban relations.

LBJ reversed the Viet Nam withdrawal order and we all know what happened after that.

---

Address to the General Assembly of the United Nations - President John F. Kennedy
New York - September 20th 1963

''Finally, in a field where the United States and the Soviet Union have a special capacity--in the field of space--there is room for new cooperation, for further joint efforts in the regulation and exploration of space. I include among these possibilities a joint expedition to the moon. Space offers no problems of sovereignty; by resolution of this Assembly, the members of the United Nations have foresworn any claim to territorial rights in outer space or on celestial bodies, and declared that international law and the United Nations Charter will apply. Why, therefore, should man's first flight to the moon be a matter of national competition? Why should the United States and the Soviet Union, in preparing for such expeditions, become involved in immense duplications of research, construction, and expenditure? Surely we should explore whether the scientists and astronauts of our two countries--indeed of all the world--cannot work together in the conquest of space, sending someday in this decade to the moon not the representatives of a single nation, but the representatives of all of our countries. ....''

"Never before has man had such capacity to control his own environment, to end thirst and hunger, to conquer poverty and disease, to banish illiteracy and massive human misery. We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world--or to make it the last."

-- President John F. Kennedy, September 20, 1963 speech to the UN calling for an end to the Cold War and converting the Moon Race into an international cooperative effort, two months and two days before he was removed from office.

http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Ready-Reference/JFK-Speeches/Address-Before-the-18th-General-Assembly-of-the-United-Nations-September-20-1963.aspx

sorry for the double post