Lunatic

        JACK DALLAS·THURSDAY, JULY 18, 2019

Earthset 

A lunatic, for our purposes here, is neither a blood-sucking arachnid hitching a 27.32-day orbital ride on our celestial satellite nor a reference to our current White House occupant. While I thought about joining the chorus of rightfully outraged Americans who are condemning the racist-in-chief for his recent remarks, I decided to take a more positive tack. The lunatics to whom I refer are the people who, a half-century ago, lived through a crazy time in America where we all came together as one nation to celebrate the triumph of American perseverance and ingenuity. On July 20, 2019, we will celebrate the 50-year anniversary of the Apollo 11 spaceflight and lunar landing.

New York's Central Park on July 20, 1969

All of America crowded in front of our mostly black and white television sets to watch Neil Armstrong step out of the lunar module to place the first human footprint on our moon’s surface.  I say first human footprint because we all know that Bugs Bunny put his paw prints on the moon back in the 1948 cartoon, Haredevil Hare.

Bugs Bunny on the moon in 1949, in the cartoon, Haredevil Hare

The U.S. population at the time was around 202 million and 95% of households owned a television. The moon landing pulled a 93% share of the television market, which would equate to around 360 million eyeballs in the U.S. alone. At 4:17 p.m. EDT on that Sunday afternoon in 1969, the “Eagle” landed on the surface of the moon with 30 seconds of fuel to spare. An entire nation exhaled in unison. Yes, the Vietnam War protests were set aside, hippies were just fellow Americans again, and all of America was of one mind wishing three astronauts a safe mission.

Buzz Aldrin as photographed by Neil Armstrong

We were a nation united in our celebration of this singular achievement. Television provided the common experience for all of America to watch live video from the moon that showed us, two men, planting the American flag on the lunar surface. It was the end of the ‘60s. It was also the end of a time in American music. It was a transition from the Age of Aquarius, the British invasion, and Woodstock in August of 1969, that preceded the move to the more  “funkified” ‘70s. The astronauts of the Apollo 11 mission took with them on newly invented cassette tapes, a playlist, before there were such things, of their music selections.

Music that went to the moon

The image below shows my Spotify playlist titled Jacks Apollo 11. The first eight songs were the actual songs and artists the astronauts selected and had on their Sony TC-50 tape recorder cassettes. I left off two songs from their selections because I, like Mission Control in Houston, thought Armstrong’s Mist of the Moon and Moon Moods were ear-graters.  The first song is the most obvious and is Frank Sinatra's Fly Me to the Moon, with Quincy Jones leading the Count Basie Orchestra.  To their eight selections, I added eight more from 1969’s hits where I thought the title and/or message would be appropriate for such a historic event.

One final track was added to finish the playlist titled, Armstrong.  This last song was written by John Stewart (not the comedian who spells his name Jon Stewart) to commemorate the Apollo 11 triumph.  John Stewart was a musician and songwriter who played in the early ‘60s with The Kingston Trio.

Jack's Apollo 11 playlist

The last lines to the song Armstrong, as written by John Stewart, are:

To watch a man named Armstrong

Walk upon the moon

And I wonder if a long time ago

Somewhere in the universe

They watched a man named Adam

Walk upon the earth 

I will include here next for reference some words to ponder from the apocalyptic song “In the Year 2525.”  The following are the final stanzas from that song.

In the year 9595

 I'm kinda wondering if man is gonna be alive

 He's taken everything this old earth can give

 And he ain't put back nothing, woah woah

 Now it's been 10,000 years

 Man has cried a billion tears

 For what he never knew

 Now man's reign is through

 But through eternal night

 The twinkling of starlight

 So very far away

 Maybe it's only yesterday

Conflict, triumph, and tragedy have all managed to unify America. It is truly tragic that it takes a World War, a man walking on the moon, a Columbia disaster, or the horror of 9-11 to bring unity to America.


Reference

The links below are items that may be of interest to the reader.

The first link is to the original 1949 Bugs Bunny cartoon, Haredevil Hare where Bugs Bunny lands on the moon and meets Marvin the Martian.

Next is a Haredevil Hare parody that I found amusing albeit with some foul language.

The final link is to NASA’s site where you will find a 2 minute video clip of the historic Neal Armstrong stepping on the moon along with a few pictures and a bit of narrative.


Cartoon Haredevil Hare

 Haredevil Hare parody

 NASA Moonwalk

There’s Truth in Science Fiction

I’ve enjoyed science fiction ever since I found an Isaac Asimov novel while walking to my junior high school.  I have always enjoyed science, and with science fiction, I could enjoy the “what-might-be” fantasy.

One of the many topics in science fiction involves time-travel.  A recent example of the topic would be the Back to the Future movie franchise, but I’m a bit older than that.  My first time-travel favorite was H.G. Wells’, The Time Machine.  The novella was written in 1895 and is set in 1917 Victorian England outside London.  The 1960 movie was based on the original novella and it starred Rod Taylor in the lead.  The movie co-starred Yvette Mimieux who played every boy’s dream fantasy.

Rod Taylor and Yvette Mimieux

The Time Machine used a sled-like device for time-travel and not the BTTF’s stainless steel DeLorean.  In the H.G. Wells classic, George (Rod Taylor’s character) uses his invention to travel to various periods in the future.  He witnesses Armageddon and the destruction of London and eventually travels thousands of years into the future.  He ends up in a world of young adults called Eloi who live a carefree existence in a lush garden with no interest in science and who lack all manner of curiosity or discipline.  He meets the beautiful Eloi, Weena, when he saves her from drowning.  Neither she nor any of her friends seem to have any interest in the event.

Movie poster from 1960 film

As in any good science fiction story, we have to have a villain and in this story, we have the Morlocks who live underground and only come out at night.  Warning, spoiler alert here, the Morlocks turn out to be ranchers and the Eloi are their cattle.  While there are many takeaway lessons in this tale, the Eloi’s lack of intellectual curiosity has relegated them to their fate as being nothing more than a food source for the Morlocks.

Now, back to reality, perhaps a movie title for our current situation.  We find that one of the keys to the problems associated with our divided nation, the destruction of the middle class, and the widening disparity between the very wealthy and the rest of our society, is education.

The failure of our society to provide for the proper education of the less affluent is a major hindrance to all upward mobility.  We used to discuss the cycle of poverty that caused generation after generation to remain poor but now this cycle of stagnation is affecting the former middle class and threatens its extinction.  Our public education system does not provide current generations with the tools they need to get ahead.  Our schools are overcrowded and lack funding, teachers are underpaid, and the system is guided by cost-cutting bureaucrats.

Education officials seem to want to divert education dollars to for-profit businesses that are interested in the bottom line and not in providing a good education.  Only athletes and others with some innate entertainment skill-set seem to be able to move up from their born status in American life.  All of this points to a cycle of generational poverty.

The wealthy can afford to send their progeny to the best of private schools and universities.  If the less affluent are fortunate enough to get into a good school, they are then normally burdened with a financial debt that will cripple their opportunities for much of their adult lives.  This lack of quality education venues for all but the wealthy creates a large cadre of people without the skills to advance their station in life.  The less affluent become the Eloi whose only purpose is to support and provide services and entertainment for the very wealthy.

I don’t think this is an organized “deep state” plot to keep the riff-raff in their place, but it is more a subconscious effort of the wealthy to maintain the divide.  We recently saw evidence of this in the scandal where wealthy individuals were falsifying information and buying influence to get their children into schools for which they may not have been otherwise qualified for entrance.

A 2017 study found that 51% of students in U.S. public schools were poor enough to qualify for free or reduced-cost lunches.  It has been long identified that poorly educated parents with low incomes will traditionally have children disadvantaged by a lack of parental guidance of their educations and will often suffer a nutritional disadvantage that affects cognitive development.  These people often live in areas where the local public schools are below even the low standards available elsewhere in the same public school system.

“I love the poorly educated.”  Donald Trump, February 24, 2016, in Nevada.

The wealthy need people to clean their houses, cut their lawns, grow their food, and manufacture their toys.  To this end, they will try to support a government that does not use their tax dollars to pay for good public education.  Since the wealthy pay out-of-pocket for their own children’s education, paying for someone else’s children is seen as a socialistic endeavor.  They will support Secretary Betsy DeVos’ efforts to divert taxpayer dollars away from public schools and into the pockets of for-profit charter school owners.  She sees no need for after-school care, literacy instruction for K-12 students, and advancing teacher salaries making recruitment and retention a priority.

“In contrast to European and Asian nations that fund schools centrally and equally, the wealthiest 10% of school districts in the United States spend nearly 10 times more than the poorest 10%, and spending ratios of 3 to 1 are common within states.  Poor and minority students are concentrated in the least well-funded schools, most of which are located in central cities or rural areas and funded at levels substantially below those of neighboring suburban districts.”  Linda Darling-Hammond, Stanford University

Beyond the K-12 education issues, a college education is getting more difficult to obtain and afford.  While a college education is almost a requirement in most endeavors for advancement, the competition for that education has increased dramatically over the years.  In 1988 acceptance at Columbia University was 65%; as of 2014, it dropped to 7%.  College undergraduate tuition for public colleges has risen over 200% in the last 30+ years.  The average annual tuition at public colleges is around $10,000 while a private college would cost around $35,000.

"Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today."  MalcomX

The median income for a middle-class family is around $78,000.  Adjusted for inflation, middle-income families haven’t seen raises since the year 2000.  Putting two children through four years of college would cost them $80,000 just for tuition.  Add in textbooks, transportation, housing, and beer, and now you are looking at some serious debt.  Upward mobility for the middle-class is an ever more unachievable goal, and for the less affluent, it’s almost impossible.

If the U.S. is to compete in the 21^st century and in a global economy, we need to make some serious investments in all levels of education.  We need to better educate at the K-12 level, and we need to make undergraduate and graduate educations more accessible and affordable.  We need more and better schools, better-paying teaching jobs to attract a high caliber generation of teachers, better avenues for trade-schools that address actual community needs, and more affordable avenues for the non-wealthy to obtain a meaningful education.  On this playing field alone, it is easy to see why the rich get richer and the rest of us are looking more like an entre on a Morlock dinner menu.

Who's for dinner?

Try To Imagine Trump Speaking Like This

The quotes below are excerpts from a speech delivered by President John F. Kennedy to American University in June of 1963.  It was perhaps one of the greatest presidential speeches of all time.  While you read these excerpts, try to imagine these words coming from the mouth of Donald J. Trump.  Go ahead, just try.

“I have, therefore, chosen this time and this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived--yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace.”

“What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children--not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women--not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.”

“I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all the allied air forces in the Second World War. It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn.”

“Today the expenditure of billions of dollars every year on weapons acquired for the purpose of making sure we never need to use them is essential to keeping the peace. But surely the acquisition of such idle stockpiles--which can only destroy and never create--is not the only, much less the most efficient, means of assuring peace.”
“I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary rational end of rational men. I realize that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war--and frequently the words of the pursuer fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task.”

“Some say that it is useless to speak of world peace or world law or world disarmament--and that it will be useless until the leaders of the Soviet Union adopt a more enlightened attitude. I hope they do. I believe we can help them do it. But I also believe that we must reexamine our own attitude--as individuals and as a Nation--for our attitude is as essential as theirs. And every graduate of this school, every thoughtful citizen who despairs of war and wishes to bring peace, should begin by looking inward--by examining his own attitude toward the possibilities of peace, toward the Soviet Union, toward the course of the cold war and toward freedom and peace here at home.”

The speech goes on and it is worth reading in its entirety.  This can be done at the J.F. Kennedy presidential website.  You can also watch the black and white film shot of the address at this YouTube link.  Before you go there or end your visit here, please answer the question posed earlier; can you in your wildest imagination picture D.J. Trump uttering those words or anything like them?  If you are like me, I dream of the day when we, as patriotic Americans, can hold our heads high knowing that our Commander-in-Chief has the clarity of mind and thought to make such a speech.  None of our presidents are perfect, but we at least deserve one the caliber of J.F.K.