Greetings, Dear Reader,
We made a trip around the moon. And the lead astronaut had a message conservatives around the country celebrated.
Is there more to the story?
Of course!
Let’s get after it.
WHITEY ON THE MOON
At the very core of hard science, in the deepest fabric of what we call the universe, lies an unsolvable mystery.
It’s called various names – The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, The Measurement Problem – but they all boil down to the same thing and the same problem. Mathematically, particles occupy multiple states simultaneously until we observe them. Once we do, they snap into one or another state.
Confoundingly, measuring one state – velocity or position – ensures the other remains in a “superposition,” multiple states simultaneously. If you look at where, the when is multiples. If you look at when, the where is multiples.
This isn’t an instrument issue. It’s a fundamental property of the universe we live in.
The mystery was popularized most memorably by the Schrödinger’s Cat thought experiment. If you put a cat in a box with a delicate cyanide capsule and close the box, there’s no way to tell if the cat is alive or dead unless you open the box.
From the position of the observer, the cat is both alive and dead until you open the box.
Similarly, the tensest moment for mission control during moon missions is when the flight capsule crosses into the dark side of the moon. There’s no way to know the state of the astronauts inside the capsule until they emerge from the other side and can be measured by our instrumentation.
Something cataclysmic could have happened and we’d have no idea.
Moments before crossing into this real-world superposition, the pilot of Artemis II, Victor Glover, chose his words carefully.
What he chose was the gospel of Christ.
“Christ said, in response to what was the greatest command, that it was to love God with all that you are,” he said. “We need Jesus, whether on earth or circling the moon.”
Glover also elucidated the second greatest command: Love thy neighbor.
Then he and the crew disappeared behind the moon and in so doing entered the philosophical fabric of the greatest and most persistent scientific mystery of the universe.
He hadn’t yet emerged from the other side and already he was a hero to political conservatives everywhere. Starved for Christ in popular culture, here was arguably the most historic pilot this side of Neil Armstrong, no less dedicated to Christ.
Unlike Armstrong, however, Glover is decidedly black.
A son to a Caribbean mother and native black American. She was a bookkeeper and he was a police officer. Victor Glover was born in 1976. Attended high school where he excelled in both athletics and academics. He was accepted into Cal Polytechnic where he majored in engineering. He was also an accomplished wrestler and football player.
Glover then got three STEM graduate degrees from military universities and was commissioned as a pilot in the Navy. His grandfather before him was a pilot in the Air Force during the Korean War, but was not afforded many opportunities his white colleagues enjoyed during the war.
Unlike the apparitional racism of today, racism against blacks back then was realer, more measureable, and institutionally explicit in many ways.
Seven years before Glover was born, the poem “Whitey on the Moon” became a rallying cry for blacks, particularly in Harlem, who believed spaceflight was a waste when that money could go toward social programs for the poor and downtrodden. The poem also became a mantra for various Marxist protest organizations around the country.
Despite the fact that it was written to contest the concept of space flight, decades later, Victor Glover would listen to the spoken word poem twice a week on his drive into work.
“I live in the America that sent me to space, told my grandfather he couldn’t fly during the Korean conflict when he was enlisted, but he got to sit and watch me fly,” Glover told Axios at the time. “We live in a very complicated country.”
When Black Lives Matter set off the riots during the so-called “Summer of Love” in 2020, Glover responded to the movement positively and ended up in corporate media coverage that was typical at the time. While there are many mysteries of the universe, the effect of BLM on actual black lives is not one of them. It can be measured in blood and death and destruction. It was not a net positive for the black community.
It’s also beyond a shadow of a doubt that while racism was more measurable in the days of Glover’s grandfather, the outcomes for black people and black families were decidedly better in spite of the obstacles. It’s no secret why either. Family, parenthood and faith are mighty equalizers against the oppression of the state. That might explain why the state attacked all three with gusto in the years following Glover’s birth, particularly in the black community.
Ironically, the heralds of “Whitey on the Moon” got what they wanted, the welfare state broadened, and by all measurements, it destroyed their communities.
Life, like people, like the mysteries of faith and the universe, is complicated. Measure one side, and the other becomes a state of confusion.
While ice water might travel through his veins, Glover is no less human than the rest of us, prone to moments of misjudgment or weakness based on the demands of the crowd. As any Christian well knows, Peter himself denied Christ three times.
And so I don’t even need to look to know that when the crew of Artemis II was announced, conservatives did their pouncing. I don’t need to patrol the cesspool of Twitter to know people called Glover a diversity hire. The “diversity” of the crew I’m sure was fodder for both sides of the political debate.
A few short years later, NPR wonders why NASA is no longer heralding its “diversity.” In its write-up just seven days ago, NPR bemoans NASA’s prior history of “white, Christian men” while noting that Glover is black.
They either didn’t know or didn’t care about his faith.
Where Glover falls on the political spectrum might be measureable, but it’s as irrelevant as his skin color. His resume speaks for itself. He’s flown 24 combat missions. The ghost of Neil Armstrong steadies his hands as much as the Holy Ghost does his spirit.
Christian. Son. Husband. Father. Citizen. Pilot. Exemplary in all.
The rest might be blurry, but these are the only states of his being that matter right now.
MORE LINKS
DC Put On ‘Spring Teen Jam’ To Keep Juveniles Out Of Trouble — Instead, Eight Got Arrested
People need to start helping themselves.
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‘Saturday Night Live’ Star Faces Scrutiny After Admitting To Pantsing A Boy
A teenage high jinks classic.
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Sounds like a nice time.
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