NASA, the Right, 9/11, and Lies

Today, Mark Steyn in for Limbaugh revisited one of the biggest, hypocritical tropes available in the conservative grab bag: NASA.

"You see," they say, "NASA was a bastion of American exceptionalism, a sign of America the Winner, and now it's done so it's Obama's fault. Obama hates America."

This is a Lies & Stupid sammich.

• NASA was and continues to be government-funded.
• The race to the moon was founded on a pissing contest with godless USSR.
• Hundreds of billions of dollars of tax money spent by the government got us to the moon.
• NASA was defunded by BushII.
• NASA was defunded by BushII because private enterprise is supposedly a good thing.

So welcome to brain rape. Spending billions on anything? Bad. Unless it's to prove our machismo against non-Christians (see: illegal wars). Defunding a government program to let free enterprise move in? Good! Until the defunding command rolls over to a Democratic presidential term where we can blame that president for not believing in America.

And then Steyn rolled it over into 9/11 - You know what we did in the 60's? We said "We're going to the moon" and we fucking did, yo (despite the absurd espense). "Can you see us going to the moon now?" (No. Remember? Government spending = BAD.) So on 9/11, we should've jumped on that hole and built up that skyline so fast it made Al Queda's heads spin! Yeah! Except "We" as in "America" don't control that. That's private enterprise confronted with political infighting, egos, etc.

So here's what you've actually proved in your diarrhea-mouth diatribe: If the government is solidly focused enough and dumps enough tax dollars into something, we can do something amazing like get to the moon. Maybe develop and build an entire interstate highway system. If we leave it to private enterprise, we get a hole in the middle of New York City that's getting filled WAY slower than American Exceptionalism declares it should be filled.

Folks on the AM dial are mad in their rhetoric, and the goons listening for the most part are slurping it up with a straw, ignoring inconsistencies, and becoming dumber by the minute.

Good for us, I guess. Except they're more ignorant and own more guns.