Trump vs Nasa

This week offered two different futures for humanity. The first was based on self-pity and ignorance, the second on reason and common humanity.

Photo by Daniel Olah on Unsplash

Trump walks out like the doddering, vicious old fool he so obviously is. He slouches out, a cross between a corpse and a sullen teenager, a half dead thing made youthful by its bitter jealousies. He wears his insecurities like he wears his clothes: badly and ostentatiously. His face is darkened by the ugly thoughts which motivate him. He grips the lectern and rotates through the four stock expressions he seems capable of, none of them bearing any connection to his words, all of them motivated by vanity, or egotism, or mendaciousness, or bile.

For fucks sake don’t come here for balance because I have none to offer. This man is a poisonous fool who has damned us all. Sometimes I think of all the people who will suffer because of him - poor people, in poor countries, who damn well deserve better - and I am nearly overcome by rage.

But there is another form of balance which was exhibited this week. It was a kind of cosmic balance. On Wednesday we were treated to two very different visions of our future. It was a day when the grubbiest hand-to-mouth prejudice - the politics of a man on his knees in a field stuffing mud into his mouth - suddenly stood in stark comparison to all that is best and most ambitious in the human project. And afterwards, for reasons that we couldn’t quite articulate, things felt different. Perhaps, for the first time in a long time, there was a small, trace-element of hope.

Trump began to issue his generic series of lies as soon as he began speaking. This was his address to the nation, taken in full by broadcasters on Wednesday evening. It was his opportunity to look presidential and to give a clear indication of what is happening in Iran. But of course he cannot do this. He is so far beyond any expectation of realism that even if he began to tell the truth now it would not be believed. He will never be presidential. He isn’t even really a man. He is more of a growth.

The format does not suit him. He does best when he gets to speak off the cuff, making his audience of preening fools laugh at his various cruelties. His thoughts at these sorts of events are no more coherent, but his ability to speak freely means he can at least demonstrate range in tone. When he is forced to stick to a script all the populist magic deserts him. He speaks like a recalcitrant boy in class, glumly reading off a piece of paper.

This makes the patent decay of his cognitive functions extremely obvious to any observer, even the most credulous. “Our enemies are losing in America as it has been for five years under my presidency is winning and now winning bigger than ever before.” These are words he said, printed out exactly as he said them. No, it makes no sense. Who knows? Perhaps this is what it’s like inside his mind, a place without grammar or punctuation, just a ceaseless stream of imaginary sleights and humiliations.

A little later, declining into total incoherence: “I killed General Qasem Soleimani in my first term. He was an evil genius, brilliant person, a horrible human being however. The father of the roadside bomb. Had he lived, just horrible what he did, Iran would have been perhaps in a far better stronger position, had he lived we would have probably a different conversation tonight but you know what we’d still be winning and winning big.”

On and on it goes. Mindless babble. Witless hyperbole. The US had achieved “victories like few people have ever seen before”, “nobodies ever seen anything like it”, “we’ve built the strongest economy in history”, “there’s no country like us anywhere in the world”. And then finally, in a flourish, a string of garbage so severe it seemed to suggest an imaginary world he has now inhabited so completely that he has lost all contact with reality. “The whole world is watching and they can’t believe the power, strength and brilliance,” he said. “They just can’t believe what they’re seeing. They leave it to your imagination but they can’t believe what they’re seeing.” And I suppose that for once, by accident, he had said something true. We can’t believe what we’re seeing.

If he was only mad he would be merely dangerous, but in reality it is much worse than that. He is also vicious and toxic, a personification of all the worst sentiments that dwell within the human heart: self-pity, bullying, the urge for dominance, the refusal to take responsibility for your actions, a complete lack of interest in the truth - a journey back through the evolution of the species. And so inevitably, at some point even his presidential addresses will involve some kind of criminal conclusion.

First come the lies. “Regime change was not our goal,” he said, “we never said regime change. But regime change has occurred because all their original leaders have died.” In fact, on March 5th he said: “We want to go in and clean out everything. We don’t want someone who would rebuild over a 10-year period. We want them to have a good leader. We have some people who I think would do a good job.” As for the current state of the regime, it is actually in a stronger position as a result of his war than it was before it.

Then comes the desperate efforts to embroil others in the errors he has himself made. “Go to the Strait and just take it,” he said to other countries, who now face soaring prices and a newly-empowered Islamo-fascist government as a result of his actions. “Protect it, use it for yourselves. Iran has been essentially decimated, the hard part is done so it should be easy.” And then, as if completely overawed by the sense of whimsy he has experienced in his mind: “In any event when this conflict is over the Strait will open up naturally, it’ll just open up naturally”.

Finally, inevitably, there is the thinly-veiled racial hatred and the indifference towards human lives, the near-genocidal desire for blood and death, the unmistakable sense of a soul composed of something dark and moist, a reversal of decency. “We’re going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks,” he said. “We’re going to bring them back to the stone ages where they belong.” Where they belong. That phrase just hangs in the air, an admission that his motivations cannot be reduced to reason, even if a reasonable argument could be formulated for them. A reminder that he is motivated by race and hierarchy and has always been since his very first comments about Mexican rapists on the campaign trail in 2016. A reminder that all of his actions must be interpreted through that lens.

These kinds of comments, with their emphasis on punitive bombing without any legitimate military dimension, are barely even noticed now. But if the world is ever to make sense again, this statement and those like it should be used against Trump and his allies when they are in court for crimes against humanity.

Those are his motivations. Ugly, snarling things. And each time he acts on them he produces consequences which bear the character of his original impulse. Now, they take place around him daily, as he loses any kind of control or even influence in the world.

“We are unstoppable as a military force,” he said. But in fact America has never looked so weak. Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz has done what its military preparation could not: humbled the US. The consequences are terrible and will be felt across the world through price rises in the key inputs which travel through it: oil, liquified natural gas, aluminium, helium, fertiliser. In Europe, the age of Trump-whispering has come to an ignoble end. Only Nato’s Mark Rutte is left, pretending to respect the US president in a desperate bid to protect an organisation which is already dead. Now, European leaders gather without Trump, and feel free to plainly refute him, and in fact define themselves in opposition to his actions.

It is all spiraling away - a kind of parable, a masterclass in moral storytelling. The Iran operation was conceived through ignorance and hatred. It was pursued haphazardly, without proper attention or intellectual rigour. It was conducted without seriousness. And now it is all falling apart, its main protagonist humbled by the consequences he did not foresee, an ethical cascade.

Just before Trump’s speech, at the Kennedy Space Center, a rocket launched the Orion CM-003 Integrity spacecraft into orbit, carrying a joint American-Canadian crew. Second by second on that first day, it made history. Canadian Jeremy Hansen became the first non-US citizen to travel beyond low Earth orbit. Christina Koch became the first woman. Victor Glover the first person of colour.

Trump dutifully celebrated it at the start of his speech, but in fact this mission is grounded in the precise opposite values to those he espouses. It is based on internationalism, cooperation, forward-planning, reason, curiosity, intellectual seriousness and human progress.

Why is it called Integrity? Because the four astronauts decided upon that name. “We started with the Nasa core values and then we looked at the Canadian space agency core values,” commander Reid Wiseman said. “And then we talked about what matters to us most in our core values. What do we want this to be? Peace and hope for all humankind, that is what we really want.”

There is always a kind of national pride around Nasa space missions, shimmering on the edges. You can’t eradicate it. They use American tax money to fund this stuff, they have to at least suggest that it serves a hazy patriotic function. But the reality of space is international and the natural language to describe it is necessarily of that character. People can’t help it, even when they try to anchor it down in the nation state.

From the first moment that mankind viewed the Earth from space, it was obvious that borders are artificial and preposterous, that we have more to unite than divide us. Every time a person goes up there, they say the same things, because what else could you say?

This is the Overview Effect, a moment of near-transcendence created by the view of Earth from above. In 1971, the Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell said he experienced an “explosion of awareness” and an “overwhelming sense of oneness and connectedness... accompanied by an ecstasy... an epiphany”. Speaking aboard the Integrity today, Glover spoke in similar terms. “The first thing I would say is trust us: you look amazing, you look beautiful, and from up here you all look like one thing. You know, homo sapiens is all of us, no matter where you’re from or what you look like. We’re all one people.”

In recent years, primarily because of Elon Musk, space exploration has become right-wing coded. It has been associated with some incredibly dreary writing about the human condition, including the idea that we can only find meaning by a kind of solar imperialism, by returning to the frontier. But in fact, the history of space travel is one which corresponds to progressive thought and has stimulated it. It is not about space travel as a Plan B so we can exploit our planet without consequence. It is about space travel as the best way of demonstrating how tenuous and rare and beautiful our planet is. How zealously we must protect it.

On Christmas Eve 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 saw the Earth rise as they orbited the moon. “Wow, is that pretty” astronaut Bill Anders told his colleague Jim Lovell. “You got a colour film, Jim? Hand me a roll of colour, quick, would you?” He then took perhaps the most important photograph in human history. An image of the planet from far away, a delicate, crystalline blue and white marvel in an ocean of black. It was about beauty, yes, but it was also fundamentally about seeing the Earth in context. We are always here, so we think of it as solid, grounded, reliable, everlasting. But there, zoomed out, it suddenly seemed utterly vulnerable, fragile, tenuous, unique: a miracle.

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

That photo is credited with helping to give birth to the environmental movement. Within months, millions of people were taking to the streets demanding action on the environment. Friends of the Earth was founded in 1969, the US Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, Greenpeace in 1971.

As Koch said today: “There’s nothing that prepares you for the breathtaking aspect of seeing your home planet, both lit up bright as day and also the moon glow on it at night with a beautiful beam of the sunset”.

These moments were not born from hatred or ignorance. They were born from curiosity and wonder. People who looked up at the stars and wondered what was out there.

Nasa missions come from years of planning, preparation, practical endeavor, trial-and-error, intellectual receptiveness - all the best traits that the scientific method has to offer and which have improved humanity since the Dark Ages. As of this week, those efforts delivered the first crewed mission beyond low Earth orbit since the 1970s. They will set records on distance from Earth and the velocity of atmospheric reentry. They will spend a day observing the far side of the moon, seeing parts of the body which have never been witnessed up close by humanity before. Eventually, with any luck, these missions will lead to a manned trip to Mars.

People will sometimes complain that these missions are irrelevant to people on earth, that they do not help us improve the lives of the poor or the disadvantaged. But in fact space missions behave in the same way as Trump’s speech. They have a moral character in their action and the consequences reflect the quality of the original behaviour. In Trump’s case, those consequences are chaos, suffering and self-imposed impotence. In Nasa’s case they are enlightenment, progress, and technological development.

The long term objective of sending a manned mission to Mars requires that we solve a set of discrete problems: What is the impact of prolonged radiation on humans? How do we produce food from barren soil? What’s the most effective way to recycle matter and water, to generate carbon-free energy, to build advanced batteries?

The solution to these problems will help us on Earth, in particular on addressing climate change and curing cancer. Nasa’s fission surface power is clean technology with zero carbon emissions. Its solar arrays use roll-out tech, allowing them to be treated almost like a yoga mat during transportation and then unfurled for use. This technology will help create a green future on Earth.

There is a device onboard the ship called Avatar - a chip containing cells from the astronauts, using bone marrow tissue as a bellwether for the effect of radiation on the production of blood cells. When they return, the samples will be analysed for the impact on spaceflight and deep-space radiation. This research could end up having a major impact on personalised medicine, advance the use of biomedical technologies and contribute to cancer treatment.

Wednesday displayed two different versions of humanity, two different projects for our species. It was a demonstration, for those who care to see it, of two different futures and how we might end up with one or the other.

In the first, we are lost in a haze of self-pity and ignorance. This kind of politics has swept the world and produced nothing but hatred, deprivation and moral squalor. It enriches those who are already very rich but in the end it does not even work for its advocates. Trump himself now looks mad and weak, a man increasingly living inside his head because the reality of the outside world is too much to bear. His snarl offers no promise. His vitriol solves no problems. All he can do is make us hate one another and become poorer for it.

In the second, we are found in a clear-sighted vision of reason and common humanity. This kind of project has been in decline for decades but it is now back on the agenda, with a renewed sense of ambition and momentum. It enriches us as a species to see our shared home and it enriches us individually by the lateral innovations which are developed as a result of the missions. We look much more impressive than we did before: outward looking, stripped of ignorance and superstition, desiring to work alongside one another rather than undermine each other, and dealing with the reality of the world as it is rather than as we wish it to be. Our technology solves problems. Our science helps us love one another and become richer for it.

It’s hard to imagine another day, back through the mists of human history, when the choices before us looked quite so stark - both because of the ambition of Artemis II but also because of the sheer extent of Trump’s moral degeneracy.

After his address, the markets reacted badly, finally seeming to understand that he has no plan and that nothing he says is of any relevance. The media response was unusually critical. The polling showed deep opposition to the war. It was possible, for just a moment, to believe that we might one day take the other, better path.

Odds and Sods

I’ve done something which might arguably turn out to be a mistake and set up an Instagram and TikTok account for various political ramblings. Yes that’s right, I’m pivoting to video, only a decade after everyone else.

I’ve found the political conversation on those sites just fucking abject really, dominated almost entirely by the extremes, so this is a chance to push a liberal voice. I have no idea how it will go. Probably very ‘how do you do fellow kids’, but my plan is to put up a couple of videos a week, whenever the feeling takes hold of me. I think anyone with experience of the podcast on here has an impression of the level of planning and professionalism that I’ll bring to bear in this endeavour. If you’re on either site, do follow so I can ruin your mood across your social media experience. Here’s the Instagram link and here’s the TikTok link.

My i paper column this week was on King Charles’ upcoming trip to the US, which I argue should not take place. We’re basically dispatching him to a madhouse where they wear oversized shoes in order to celebrate their manhood. No good purpose is served by sending the king into that kind of circus. Here’s the link. My report from the UK for ABC’s Late Night Live came just after Keir Starmer’s Downing Street press conference and covered Iran, the looming energy crisis and Labour leadership struggles. Here’s the link.

The best thing I saw this week was Laugh Out Loud 2. It’s just the genius of a perfect idea really: the only thing funnier than a decent joke is not being able to laugh at it. This programme gets a bunch of comedians, sticks them in a room and then penalises them if they laugh. It reminds me of school, of those moments where laughing was the worst thing you could do because it would get you in terrible trouble, and which were therefore simply the funniest thing that had ever happened to you.

Happy Easter you cunts, see you next week.