Today, we are on a \u201cknife\u2019s edge\u201d of time.\u00a0\u00a0The President of the United States has the entire world holding its collective breath.\u00a0\u00a0Yesterday he threatened to destroy Iran; bombing their power plants and highways, sending bombers and missiles to, as he said it; \u201cSend them back to the Stone Age\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0His \u201cdeadline\u201d: 8:00pm tonight, 3:30am Tehran time.\u00a0\u00a0We already have assassinated their leadership, destroyed their navy and air force, and decimated their communications.\u00a0\u00a0This next step is \u201ctotal warfare\u201d, when we stop attacking military targets, and begin to wage war against their populace.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today, the Vice President of the United States is in Hungary, campaigning for the authoritarian Presidential candidate there, Viktor Orban.\u00a0\u00a0The opposition to Orban, Peter Maygar, is in favor of restoring democratic institutions, against Orban\u2019s crony-corruption, and for improving relationships with the European Union.\u00a0\u00a0Orban is a \u201cknife\u2019s edge\u201d away from being a Fascist, Magyar is a \u201ccenter-right\u201d candidate.\u00a0\u00a0But the man a heartbeat away from the most powerful position in the world, Vice President J.D. Vance, is campaigning for Orban.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yesterday a wonderful thing happened.\u00a0\u00a0For the first time in over half-a-century, human beings were once again circling the moon.\u00a0\u00a0I was thrown back to the first time that occurred, in 1968.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was twelve years old, living in Kettering, Ohio, a suburb of Dayton.\u00a0\u00a01968 was a very difficult year for America.\u00a0\u00a0The country was torn apart by the Vietnam War.\u00a0\u00a0Two important national leaders, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, were assassinated in the prime of their lives.\u00a0\u00a0President Johnson chose not to run for re-election. His Vice President, Hubert Humphrey, was caught between supporting Johnson\u2019s Vietnam policy, or gaining the anti-war support.\u00a0\u00a0That division led to riots at the Democratic Convention, and the eventual election of a pro-war President, Republican Richard Nixon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Riots, war, political turmoil:\u00a0\u00a01968 was a year on a \u201cknife\u2019s edge\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0Cities burned.\u00a0\u00a0University campuses were closed.\u00a0\u00a0Protestors faced off against National Guardsmen, putting flowers in the barrels of their guns.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But on Christmas Eve of 1968, Americans were, for a moment, united as one.\u00a0\u00a0There was Christmas dinners, presents around the tree, but more importantly we huddled around the television that evening.\u00a0\u00a0Three Americans were doing the impossible: they were orbiting the moon.\u00a0\u00a0And we were all there, watching, as Apollo 8 came out of the communications blackout around the far-side of the Moon, and, for the first time, saw earthrise over the lunar surface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders read to the world the first words in the Bible, the book of Genesis.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As the on-board camera panned the moon, Borman intoned, \u201cIn the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0Then, as the camera tilted to see the earth, the \u201cbig blue marble\u201d rising, they continued \u201cAnd God said, let there be light, and he separated the light from the darkness\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was a kid, sitting on the living room floor at one of Mom and Dad\u2019s friend\u2019s house.\u00a0\u00a0We were there for dinner, but stayed to share in the moment, with the rest of the country.\u00a0\u00a0As divided and angry and riven as Americans were; for that moment, we were one.\u00a0\u00a0It didn\u2019t \u201cfix\u201d our world, but it made us realize that the seemingly infinite problems really were finite to a small \u201cblue marble\u201d that we all shared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yesterday we (humans, Americans and a Canadian) were back.\u00a0\u00a0I sat in my own family room, now sixty-nine years old, and marveled as the Artemis crew came out from the dark-side of the moon.\u00a0\u00a0I don\u2019t think the whole world was watching.\u00a0\u00a0We are again torn, again facing war, again agonizing over political choices.\u00a0\u00a0And today, with viewing so personalized (not the three channels of the 1960\u2019s) most probably missed it.\u00a0\u00a0Jenn and I had to download the “NASA app” to see it in real time.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And even though we again saw how finite our earth is, like 1968, it was just a moment, in our knife\u2019s edge world.\u00a0\u00a0Most of the world takes going to the moon again for granted \u2013 I guess they\u2019re waiting for 2028, when Artemis IV will actually land on the moon.\u00a0\u00a0Just like we took it for granted in the 1960\u2019s that humans were on the moon to stay, after we landed in the summer of 1969.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s nothing pre-ordained here.\u00a0\u00a0We went to the moon in 1960\u2019s and 70\u2019s, then abandoned the effort.\u00a0\u00a0And we spent another six years in Vietnam, another 20,000\u00a0\u00a0Americans were killed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We are on the knife\u2019s edge today.\u00a0\u00a0Our world changed for the \u201cgood\u201d yesterday, but by tomorrow, we may be in a full-scale war.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Today we take a deep breath \u2013 then hold it to see where our world will go.\u00a0\u00a0Is it a future in space?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or another war in a far-off place?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"