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As someone who considers the moon landing to be mankind's greatest achievement, this poem has only ever inspired dark feelings within me. The attitude that we h

by yesco 3y ago

As someone who considers the moon landing to be mankind's greatest achievement, this poem has only ever inspired dark feelings within me. The attitude that we have to choose between social services or humanity's future, that we can't do both, that space travel is pointless because we haven't "fixed all the problems at home yet", is pure entitlement, it's selfish and it's wrong. This poem is certainly good at getting it's message across, but that message is racist degenerative trash.

sangnoir 3y ago
How is it racist? Is "whitey" a slur? Or perhaps a poem written in 1969 highlighting that obvious fact that Apollo astronauts were all white is the real racism?
- yesco 3y ago
  The moon landing transcends race, it inspired people, humans, worldwide. This poem diminishes it into some white exclusive eccentricity. Sure, perhaps a black person should have been among the first involved, I can certainly get behind that criticism. But that's not what the poem critiques, and it's not what activists who protested the moon landing asked for either. So yes it's racist, the real kind.
  - sangnoir 3y ago
    > The moon landing transcends race Perhaps aspirationally, but empirically, the Apollo program did not transcend race. It's not racist to call out racism - the "He who smelt it, dealt it" defense is intellectually lazy. > But that's not what the poem critiques, I don't see how you can say that, when the poem is literally titled "Whitey on the Moon". One would have to assume the decision to highlight whiteness was deliberate - it easily could have been "Neil on the Moon" or "Man on the Moon" if the author/perfomer so desired.
    - yesco 3y ago
      > Perhaps aspirationally, but empirically, the Apollo program did not transcend race. It's not racist to call out racism You are wrong. I'm unwilling to debate this fact with you, or even discuss the matter any further frankly, I have made my position clear. Your interpretation of the poem shows a clear lack of understanding on the historical context surrounding it.
mbo 3y ago
I don't think it's unfair to consider the opportunity cost of pursuing these things versus providing social services. Eisenhower points to a similar tradeoff in his Chance for Peace speech: > Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. Now admittedly this is talking about about the cost of the military industrial complex rather than the cost of scientific pursuits. But I'm sure someone could make a case for the Apollo program merely being an ICBM manufacturing program in a trench coat.

by yesco 3y ago

sangnoir 3y ago

How is it racist? Is "whitey" a slur? Or perhaps a poem written in 1969 highlighting that obvious fact that Apollo astronauts were all white is the real racism?

yesco 3y ago
The moon landing transcends race, it inspired people, humans, worldwide. This poem diminishes it into some white exclusive eccentricity. Sure, perhaps a black person should have been among the first involved, I can certainly get behind that criticism. But that's not what the poem critiques, and it's not what activists who protested the moon landing asked for either. So yes it's racist, the real kind.
- sangnoir 3y ago
  > The moon landing transcends race Perhaps aspirationally, but empirically, the Apollo program did not transcend race. It's not racist to call out racism - the "He who smelt it, dealt it" defense is intellectually lazy. > But that's not what the poem critiques, I don't see how you can say that, when the poem is literally titled "Whitey on the Moon". One would have to assume the decision to highlight whiteness was deliberate - it easily could have been "Neil on the Moon" or "Man on the Moon" if the author/perfomer so desired.
  - yesco 3y ago
    > Perhaps aspirationally, but empirically, the Apollo program did not transcend race. It's not racist to call out racism You are wrong. I'm unwilling to debate this fact with you, or even discuss the matter any further frankly, I have made my position clear. Your interpretation of the poem shows a clear lack of understanding on the historical context surrounding it.

mbo 3y ago

I don't think it's unfair to consider the opportunity cost of pursuing these things versus providing social services. Eisenhower points to a similar tradeoff in his Chance for Peace speech: > Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. Now admittedly this is talking about about the cost of the military industrial complex rather than the cost of scientific pursuits. But I'm sure someone could make a case for the Apollo program merely being an ICBM manufacturing program in a trench coat.