It sometimes seems that democracy, somewhat paradoxically, trends towards division. The grand projects of times past were generally created by entities where th

It sometimes seems that democracy, somewhat paradoxically, trends towards division. The grand projects of times past were generally created by entities where their successor would generally be vested in their success. Be this in the form of religions organizations or non-democratic political entities such as monarchies. In democracy this kinship frequently does not exist between successive entities, and there is even often an effort to dismantle the works of a previous administration as well as blaming any faults on them. There are also basic democratic political problems. One very myopic, and very common, political argument is of the form: "You want to [do something amazing] while there's [people dying of cancer] [kids starving to death in Africa] [etc] [etc]?!" This argument feels reasonable to most people, and can be used to frame a candidate (who wants to do grand things) as being out of touch. And it's extremely effective. It makes it difficult to spend large amounts of money on things outside of those that can be justified on a very immediate level, such as war. The space program is probably the greatest project the modern United States has engaged in. And if it had carried on it's likely our species would now today inhabit bodies beyond just this planet. But it was not continued. This [1] is a song from the 70s that was published shortly before Nixon, who had a long standing animosity with JFK since losing a razor thin election to him in 1960, would completely gut the space program - which was very much a reflection of JFK. So determined were his efforts that in 1972, as Apollo 17 was returning to earth during his presidency, he stated "This may be the last time in this century that men will walk on the Moon." He initially even wanted to cancel both the Apollo 16 and 17 missions fearing that a mishap during them could negatively affect his reelection chances. The entire space program emphasizes all of the issues with democracy and grand projects. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goh2x_G0ct4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goh2x_G0ct4