Lunar trajectory

(c) NASA

When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped out of the Lunar Excursion Module in 1969 I remember a feeling a wonder, awe and hope.  I was eight years old and had followed the Apollo program from Apollo 8, the first manned flight crewed by astronauts Borman, Lovell and Anders who were the first men ever to fly around the moon. 

In what seemed an eternity later but was in fact only six months, Armstrong and Aldrin planted the American flag on the lunar surface.  The Apollo program was only three years old, and less than a year since the first Apollo astronauts had left earth^*

Five more moon landing were made until the program was terminated after the flight of Apollo 17 in 1972.  It had taken only three years from the first manned flight of the Saturn V to the sixth lunar landings. In hindsight, the speed with which the program moved forward was astonishing. That was fifty one years ago. 

In 1989 the Soviet Union collapsed and the "space race" effectively ended. The Space Shuttle never seemed to fulfill its original promise and didn't capture the public's imagination as the moon landings had. America turned inwards to become increasingly consumed in what we now think of as the culture wars. 

Existential challenges confront the country and the world yet America's increasingly chronic inability to tackle anything consequential, at least with any success, imperils the country and the wider world. Two wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq, failed to achieve their objectives, the wealth gap has widened and trust in institutions has all but evaporated. 

The feeling I had as I watched man set foot on the moon, the sense that there was almost no limit to what could be accomplished, has given way to the realization that America's sclerotic politic and societal dysfunction has turned the dream of a bright future, brimming with possibilities, into to a bleak and deeply depressing nightmare         

^*Tragically Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee, the crew of Apollo 1, died in a fire on the launch pad in Feb 21st, 1967.

Strange priorities

Judge Aileen M. Cannon, in what appears to be a very unjudgmental decision, split the difference between Special Counsel Jack's Smith request for a speedy trial and Donald Trump's attempts to evade justice by delaying his trial until he might be in a position to direct the Justice Department to drop his case.

To a Brit the situation seems utterly bizarre and Kafkaesque. First Trump's argument that the trial might interfere with his political campaign is mind-boggling.  Defendants in criminal cases generally don't get to use the argument that they can't go to trial because they can't get time off work.  So clearly not everyone is equal in the eyes of our justice system. 

Second, that notion that it is possible to campaign for an elected office that could be used to alter the course of ones own criminal case equally baffling. To suggest that this would create a conflict of interest is, even for a Brit, an extraordinary understatement.  It's as if Jeffrey Dahmer stood for election to the governor of Wisconsin in order to stop his case going to trial or to grant himself a pardon were he to be convicted. 

While there may not be constitutional or legislative guard-rails that prevent a presidential candidate from either the delaying of a trial or the possibility of self-pardon or of stopping an ongoing prosecution, the Founding Father's almost certainly would have not approved of such self-dealing.  The constitution does seem to suggest that public service requires people be of "good moral character";  and what that meant may, to the Founding Father's, have seemed completely self-evident. 

However while they may have met or been aware that individuals as unscrupulous as Trump existed, it probably never crossed their minds that the electorate would ever entertain such as absurd notion as electing such a person to the highest office in the land.  Yet the morality that the Founding Father's considered sufficient to keep individuals lacking "good moral character" out of the White House seems to have evaporated. With the increasing polarization of American politics both sides are willing to turn a blind eye to a lack of "good moral character" if their side stands to gain.  What is  particularly ironic is that the GOP, which routinely rails against the decline in societal  morals, is willing to entertain the candidacy of a deeply immoral person ostensibly in order to restore the country's morals.