by Mark Steyn
Topical Take: After America
September 6, 2024
I have resisted saying too much about the two astronauts whose eight-day mission to the International Space Station in June has turned, perforce, into an eight-month stay, lasting (at least) until February next year. Mainly because its awful symbolism is too pathetic, in both the archaic and contemporary senses. There has been remarkably little high-level official reaction - to the point that Kamala is so oblivious to whatever's going on up there that her campaign slogan is "We're not going back." Yeah, tell it to Suni and Butch.
The US used to be both sunny and butch - and the Vice President certainly has no plans to "go back" to that lost world. Make America Sunny and Butch Again! The crippled Boeing Starliner is supposed to return to the US sans crew tomorrow morning at approx 6am GMT - or just after midnight local time, so the TV audience will be fairly minimal. The symbolism is larger than merely Boeing, just another once great brand running on fumes. The Suni & Butch flight was also the first launch of a manned spacecraft from Cape Canaveral since 1968. It is easy to get out of a habit, and hard to recover it - whether it be the habit of human space flight, of assembling ad hoc floating harbours off sea coasts, or of respecting a general right to freedom of expression. On all three fronts, to reprise an old catchphrase, nothing works anymore.
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https://www.steynonline.com/14620/the-lost-frontier
