The Lessons of Apollo 11
7/20/26
Citizens!
Today is the 57th anniversary of Apollo 11’s landing on the Moon and mankind’s first steps on another celestial body.
Those who have been reading our screed for years know we have long thought this was our species’ finest hour, a line of demarcation separating everything that came before from everything that followed. The invention of gunpowder, the birth of Christ, and the Beatles also fit that description, as well as some others, perhaps, but the list of such days is very short.
Apollo 11 was the culmination of a long national effort, one that began in 1961 when President John F. Kennedy called for Americans to land on the moon before “this decade is out”.
America does not have a national effort now, unless you consider partisan bickering a great national effort. We are so far removed from our national path that we haven’t done anything great since Apollo 17 left the Moon in 1972, we have been at war every day since 1989, and we’ve twice elected Donald Trump – an ignorant liar and a man of zero moral or intellectual substance – president.
We don’t even recognize ourselves anymore…We are a nation now where we are all circling our own individual wagons, with citizens unable to take “no” for an answer or even handle an opposing viewpoint. We no longer listen, merely wait for a break in a conversation so we can issue our own opinions.
We are in our seventh decade of TV and fast food being focal points of American life and we are paying the price for it. We are well entertained and well fed, and not much interested in anything that gets in the way of that. We are no longer willing – and perhaps unable – to do anything hard. This is our loss, because this country and this planet are better places when America is on a mission and has a point to make.
Thank you for reading,
