Moonies-

I don't argue face to face about matters which might routinely be categorized as conspiracies. Nobody, especially men, wants me to explain with cold, geometric logic that they have missed the big picture. Men have precious few emotional resources and they must spend wisely. Consequently, when a man makes a passionate investment in a proposition and then another man tries to expose his folly with intellectual acumen that emotionally shortchanged fool will resist even prima facie evidence before he releases his grip on his pricey purchase. He will be smart on his own time, thank you.

Of my favorite topics to avoid debating in person, the Apollo moon landings (real or staged) lead a strong field. There does not seem to be a middle ground on this. Personally, I don't care if we went up there or not; the seeming pointlessness of the enterprise- sending men rather than machines to the moon (Prepping for human migration to other worlds? Only in a Hollywood pitch session) leaves me indifferent to the purpose, especially since no institution but the military would have any influence on whatever the consequences might be. What is fascinating is how many people defend the landings with real passion, so much so that they feel personally insulted if anyone questions the official story. I can understand this up to a point as I know I can annoy very easily with outrageous statements in the face of heartfelt conviction and at the risk of my all-original teeth; but why such a robust defense for this particular event? I'd understand such a response from a NASA veteran. It would be a gross insult to say such a thing to that person's face- in fact some smart ass confronted Buzz Aldrin with this attitude and got a fat lip for his troubles. But I have friends, family, and co- workers who have no investment emotionally or financially or psychologically in any of it and yet, whereas they will let me entertain them with endless facts concerning Dealey Plaza or The Dakota Apts. or Vermeer the forger, if I clear my throat concerning the moon landings, faces redden, knuckles whiten, teeth grind.

In the face of such irrationality I can only conclude that there is a mass psychological maneuver being employed. Though a poor man has nothing to gain by aligning his sympathies and his vote with the interests of the rich, he often votes conservative anyway; the same basic cognitive disruption process must be going on with the moon landings in an attempt to draw in that portion of the intellectual spectrum that is resistant to the chain pulling that is plied on the undereducated/spiritually simplistic. I'm talking about the empirical side of the collective consciousness and those individuals who are being conned with the same basic emotional template but with the religious facade replaced by a technocratic one.

Given the reliance the mind benders have on war as an economic stimulus, threat demonstrations like the moon missions- and their dexterous components that allow the nominal thrill of conveying humans to and fro- reinforce the helplessness/dependency paradigm vital to the survival of a centralized war making authority even as the old binding myths of angels and demons and the protective embrace of the institutional religions that rescued the faithful from the eternal battle between good and evil fall by the wayside. In addition, consider the preposterous claims of alien abductions, which are really no more than those evergreen archetypes involving the union of the human with the divine- the various virgin birth narratives, for example; these hypnotic recalls are just a side bar of the space age scientific "miracles" NASA has been peddling since our haul of Nazi scientists were chartered to unleash their mayhem at the end of the war; this alien porn is just a hold over for those who still need a trace element of body and blood in their conversion rituals but have cashiered the clouds of heaven and the wings of angels for as yet undiscovered galaxies and glowing metal disks that defy the laws of physics.

Like the JFK situation, though, one can get bogged down in the minutiae of contradictory details and miss the effect the events have had on our perceptions. This is the real problem in my view: the moon landings were not so much a triumph of human spirit, yadda yadda, but a panacea in order to accept the piggy backing advances in military hardware and their attendant destruction. The moon shots were a sales pitch as persuasive as the claims of the old churches that they were the only gateway to salvation. Whether real or imagined, though, the Apollo missions were a bill of goods.

TM

1/9/12