Shattering The Twin Barriers To Aspiration And Common Decency
More than anything else, the time we’re currently living in is rapidly changing our perceptions about what is possible. This isn’t an exclusively good or bad phenomenon. I literally cried tears of joy watching SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket successfully take-off, separate and land its two booster rockets, and finally unleash the red Tesla Roadster into space featuring Spaceman accompanied by David Bowie. I thought to myself that this was the first time in a long while that I was genuinely optimistic and cheerful about space exploration. The prospect of sharply lowered costs for orbital cargo delivery is paradigm altering, a true game changer. The International Space Station floats in space, not generating buzz or excitement about the possibilities of space. Between the decline of the Space Shuttle and the recent upswing in private space enterprises, not much has happened to pique the interest of the general public. That is a shame.
Apart from successfully demonstrating the capabilities of the Falcon Heavy rocket, Elon Musk’s biggest contribution through the launch to humanity’s forward progress might be a shift in mentality. Space is exciting again, you can do things your own way and be goddamned successful at it (launching a red sportscar into space rather than the usual block of steel or concrete, just for the heck of it), the forward momentum has been regained. In fact you could truthfully point out that this launch marks a return to the basics, rather than the flashy prestige projects of the past. It is the equivalent of staying home on a friday night studying for an exam, rather than going out on a binge. Landing on the moon was cool as hell, but it wasn’t economically profitable in the slightest. Mining and exploiting the moon’s Helium-3 reserves is still years away, if not decades. The same goes for the International Space Station, awesome as a technology demonstration, but I can’t point out how it has changed our lives for the better.
What actually changes out lives are the forgotten, boring and unreported routine launches of satellites, powering the internet, GPS, telecommunications and the like. But our world is about more than space exploration, it also features journalism and morality. Here we’ve also had a breakthrough in our perceptions of what is possible to achieve. It might be difficult to fathom as we’re in the middle of it, but the Trump era has seen the role of the press change markedly. Fake News isn’t all encompassing in terms of what’s hot in journalism these days. The press has more than ever before exceeded the limits of reporting objectively into the world of pure political advocacy. The breakdown of the barrier between savings and investment banking was heralded as a watershed moment that foreshadowed the Great Recession and financial crisis, a similar destruction of trust in the journalistic profession and their own understanding of their role has also taken place.
Despite frequently blaming Trump for eroding the concept of objective reality and facts, the media has done more than their fair share of pouring accelerants on the bonfire themselves. The tactic of salaciously reporting sleazy facts in dispute, just to get a desired story out there is almost in the realm of cliché by this point. “Some people say” is a shallow deceptive shroud of legitimacy put on the so-called journalist’s own opinion. The “Golden Shower”-dossier and Trump’s recent health examination are illustrative examples. Look at how the journalistic class behaved sitting in the press briefing room listening to a highly respected White House physician lay out the results. They genuinely desire harm on Trump, they struggled to accept the facts, constantly sniping after the narrowest threat that they could weave into a narrative disfavourable to Trump.
I’m not pretending that Trump is some paragon of virtue, above reproach for his behavior both on social media and in the real world. But his actions must be seen in the proper context, how would a normal human react to the allegations put forth in the Golden Shower dossier? Doesn’t this illustrate that Trump is in fact capable of staying calm in the face of outrageous behavior by the media class? The old barriers are now broken, this presents both opportunity and loss for the people of the world. The intent and drive that will guide them forwards will dictate whether the emergent phenomena of our world will be for the benefit or to the detriment of our planet.
