#seeing him praise julie like this back in 1964....like not in the year 2016 or whatever...makes me SO EMOTIONAL and idk why | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bountyofbeads · 5 years

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Excellent article by Adam Serwer @AdamSerwer and he is correct in that what we do now in relationship to Trump's racism will define who we are in the future 🔮. This is a defining moment in the history of the United States. PLEASE READ 📖 AND SHARE.

"Omar must be defended, but not because of her views on Israel, gay rights, or progressive taxation. You needn’t agree with her on any of those things; in fact, you needn’t like her at all. But she must be defended, because the nature of the president’s attack on her is a threat to all Americans—black or white, Jew or Gentile—whose citizenship, whose belonging, might similarly be questioned. This is not about Omar anymore, or the other women of color who have been told by this president to “go back” to their supposed countries of origin. It is about defending the idea that America should be a country for all its people. If multiracial democracy cannot be defended in America, it will not be defended elsewhere. What Americans do now, in the face of this, will define us forever."

What Americans Do Now Will Define Us Forever

If multiracial democracy cannot be defended in America, it will not be defended elsewhere.

Adam Serwer | Published July 18, 2019 12:17 PM ET | The Atlantic | Posted July 18, 2019 7:42 PM ET |

The conservative intelligentsia flocked to the Ritz-Carlton in Washington, D.C., this week for the National Conservatism Conference, an opportunity for people who may never have punched a time clock to declare their eternal enmity toward elites and to attempt to offer contemporary conservative nationalism the intellectual framework that has so far proved elusive.

Yoram Hazony, the Israeli scholar who organized the conference, explicitly rejected white nationalism, barring several well-known adherents from attending, my colleague Emma Green reported. But despite Hazony’s efforts, the insistence that “nationalism” is, at its core, about defending borders, eschewing military interventions, and promoting a shared American identity did not prevent attendees from explicitly declaring that American laws should favor white immigrants.

Some other attendees, such as National Review’s Rich Lowry, took pains to distance themselves from the president’s brand of nationalism. “We have to push back against Donald Trump when he does things to increase that breach between the right and African Americans,” Lowry said. But in the fall of 2017, when Trump attempted to silence black athletes protesting police brutality, Lowry praised his “gut-level political savvy,” writing, “This kind of thing is why he’s president.”

Read: The nationalist’s delusion

The conference stood solidly within the conservative intellectual tradition, as a retroactive attempt by the right-wing intelligentsia to provide cover for what the great mass of Republican voters actually want. Barry Goldwater did not break the Solid South in 1964 because the once Democratic voters of the Jim Crow states had suddenly become principled small-government libertarians; voters who backed Donald Trump in 2016 did not do so because they believed a nonracial civic nationalism had been eroded by liberal cosmopolitanism.

The consensus that American civic nationalism recognizes all citizens regardless of race, creed, color, or religion was already fragile before Trump took office. That principle has been lauded, with varying degrees of sincerity, by presidents from both parties, and in particular by the first black president, who reveled in reminding audiences that “in no other country in the world is my story even possible.” The nationalism that conservatives say they wish to build in fact already existed, but it was championed by a president whose persona was so deformed by right-wing caricature that they could not perceive it. Instead, they embraced the nationalism that emerged as a backlash to his very existence and all it represented.

Trump’s nationalist innovation is not taking pride in his country, supporting a principled non-interventionism, or even advocating strict enforcement of immigration laws. The only thing new Trump brings to the American nationalism of recent decades is a restoration of its old ethnic-chauvinist tradition. Conservative intellectuals cannot rescue nationalism from Trump, any more than they could rescue Goldwater from Jim Crow, because Trump’s explicit appeals to racial and religious traditionalism, and his authoritarian approach to enforcing those hierarchies, are the things that have bound conservative voters so closely to him. The failure of the conservative intelligentsia to recognize this is why it was caught so off-guard by Trump’s rise to begin with.

At a rally last night in North Carolina, Trump was reminding the country of this truth. Last week, the president told four Democratic congresswomen—Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar—to “go back” to their countries, even though all of them are American citizens. This is literally textbook racism. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission offers “Go back to where you came from” as its example of potentially unlawful harassment on the basis of national origin.

Trump’s demand is less a factual assertion than a moral one, an affirmation of the president’s belief that American citizenship is conditional for people of color, who should be grateful we are even allowed to be here. Some elected Republicans offered gentle rebukes; others defended the president’s remarks. But at his rally in North Carolina, Trump showed them all that the base is with him. The crowd erupted into chants of “Send her back” when the president mentioned Omar, the Minnesota representative who came to the United States as a refugee from Somalia.

Republicans, in the week since Trump’s initial tweet attacking the four representatives, have tried to argue that the president was criticizing their left-wing views and “hatred for America,” or that the attacks on Omar were justified because of her past remarks about Israel. This is belied by the nature of the attack itself—not only did Trump say “countries” in his tweet telling the representatives to “go back,” but much of the bill of particulars against Omar that his supporters use to justify calling for her banishment also applies to the president, long a hyperbolic critic of the American political establishment.

Adam Serwer: Trump tells America what kind of nationalist he is

Some of Omar’s remarks in the past (for which she has apologized) have echoed anti-Semitic language about Jewish conspiracies and dual loyalty, but the president has described Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “your prime minister” to American Jewish audiences, and is a proponent of the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories around immigration that terrorists have used to justify killing American Jews. No apology from the president on these matters is forthcoming, and the right will not demand one. The ancient anti-Semitic charge of dual loyalty does not somehow become more justifiable when applied to Muslims. As James Kirchick wrote for The Atlantic, “Trump’s invocation of Israel to attack four ethnic-minority women is breathtakingly cynical, effectively working to pit Jews and people of color against each other.”

Trump has falsely accused Omar of supporting al-Qaeda, of betraying her country. But when a foreign power attacked American elections, it was the president who first sought to profit from that attack, and then to obstruct the investigation into it, and finally to offer a vocal defense of the perpetrators.

The argument that Omar’s criticisms of her adopted country for failing to live up to its stated ideals justify revoking her citizenship substantiates the very criticism she lodged. Trump has said, “If you hate our country, or if you are not happy here, you can leave!” but his entire 2016 campaign was premised on the idea that many Americans not only are deeply unhappy, but also have every right to demand that things be better. That Trump’s supporters believe Omar’s sins justify her banishment, and Trump’s similar transgressions justify his presence in the White House, helps illustrate exactly what is going on here. Under Trumpism, no defense of the volk is a betrayal, even if it undermines the republic, and no attack on the volk’s hegemony can be legitimate, even if it is a defense of democracy.

Faced with the president’s baldly expressed bigotry toward four women of color in Congress, Republicans turned to reporters to argue that his attacks are part of a clever political strategy, elevating four left-wing women of color into the faces of his opposition. I suspect these Republicans, and some political reporters, believe that this somehow exonerates Trump from the charge of bigotry, as though prejudice ceases to be prejudice if it becomes instrumental. In fact, the admission that fomenting racism and division is central to Trump’s strategy is a stunning rebuke to those political reporters and pundits who, for four years, have insisted that the rise of Trump is about anything else. Trump and his most ardent liberal critics are in full agreement about the nature of his appeal, even as they differ on its morality. Only the Trumpists, and those who wish to earn their respect, fail to see it.

Adam Serwer: The cruelty is the point

It also speaks to the futility of trying to somehow rescue a Trumpian nationalism from Trump. Racism is at the core of Trumpism. The movement cannot be rescued from its bigotry, and those at the National Conservatism Conference who believe it can are in denial. Conservatives can make their case for limited government, or for religious traditionalism, but as long as it is tied to Trump or Trumpism, it will be tainted. Trump is not a champion of the civic nationalism Hazony and others claim they want to see. He is a mortal threat to it.

I often open my articles on Trumpism with explorations of American history. I’ve spent much of the past four years trying to illuminate the historical and ideological antecedents to Donald Trump, to show how America got to this point.

So I want to be very clear about what the country saw last night, as an American president incited a chant of “Send her back!” aimed at a Somali-born member of Congress: America has not been here before.

White nationalism was a formal or informal governing doctrine of the United States until 1965, or for most of its existence as a country. Racist demagogues, from Andrew Johnson to Woodrow Wilson, have occupied the White House. Trump has predecessors, such as Calvin Coolidge, who imposed racist immigration restrictions designed to preserve a white demographic majority. Prior presidents, such as Richard Nixon, have exploited racial division for political gain. But we have never seen an American president make a U.S. representative, a refugee, an American citizen, a woman of color, and a religious minority an object of hate for the political masses, in a deliberate attempt to turn the country against his fellow Americans who share any of those traits. Trump is assailing the moral foundations of the multiracial democracy Americans have struggled to bring into existence since 1965, and unless Trumpism is defeated, that fragile project will fail.

Nevertheless, most of Trump’s predecessors had something he does not yet have: the support of a majority of the electorate. Ilhan Omar’s prominence as a Republican target comes not, as conservatives might argue, simply because her policy views are left-wing. Neither is it because, as some liberals have supposed, she is an unmatched political talent. She has emerged as an Emmanuel Goldstein for the Trumpist right because as a black woman, a Muslim, an immigrant, and a progressive member of Congress, she represents in vivid terms a threat to the nation Trumpists fear they are losing.

To attack Omar is to attack a symbol of the demographic change that is eroding white cultural and political hegemony, the defense of which is Trumpism’s only sincere political purpose. Many of the president’s most outrageous comments have been delivered extemporaneously, when he departs from his prepared remarks. Last night, though, his attacks on Omar were carefully scripted, written out by his staff and then read off a teleprompter. To defend the remarks as politically shrewd is to confess that the president is deliberately campaigning on the claim that only white people can truly, irrevocably be American.

Still, a plurality of Americans in 2016 and 2018 voted against defining American citizenship in racial terms, something that has perhaps never happened before in the history of the United States. There was no anti-racist majority at the dawn of Reconstruction, during the heyday of immigration restriction, or in the twilight of the civil-rights movement. The voters of this coalition may yet defeat Trumpism, if they can find leaders who are willing and able to confront it.

That is not a given. In the face of a corrupt authoritarian president who believes that he and his allies are above the law, the American people are represented by two parties equally incapable of discharging their constitutional responsibilities. The Republican Party is incapable of fulfilling its constitutional responsibilities because it has become a cult of personality whose members cannot deviate from their sycophantic devotion to the president, lest they be ejected from office by Trump’s fanatically loyal base. The Democratic Party cannot fulfill its constitutional responsibilities because its leadership lives in abject terror of being ejected from office by alienating the voters to whom Trump’s nationalism appeals. In effect, the majority of the American electorate, which voted against Trump in 2016 and then gave the Democrats a House majority in 2018, has no representation.

The electoral coalition that gave Democrats the House represents perhaps the strongest resistance to the rising tide of right-wing ethnonational- ism in the West, yet observe what the party has done with that mandate. The great victory of the House Democrats has been to halt the Republican legislative effort to deprive millions of health-care coverage, a feat they accomplished simply by being elected. But over the past seven months, Democrats have proved unable to complete a single significant investigation, hold many memorable hearings, or pass a single piece of meaningful legislation that curtails Trump’s abuses of authority. Instead, they held their breath waiting for Robert Mueller to save them, and when he did not, they, like their Republican predecessors, took to issuing sternly worded statements, tepid pleas for civility, and concerned tweets as their primary methods of imposing accountability.

As the president’s declarations of immunity from oversight have grown more broad and lawless, the Democrats have slow-walked investigations, retreated from court battles, and unilaterally surrendered the sword of impeachment. They have only just begun to call witnesses from the Mueller inquiry, they have only just begun to challenge the president’s lawlessness in court, they have only just begun to hold Trump officials in contempt for their defiance of Congress’s constitutional prerogatives. This foot-dragging will leave them with little time to actually look into presidential abuses before campaign season begins, effectively forfeiting a massive political advantage, to say nothing of abdicating their constitutional duties. The leadership of the Democratic Party has shown more appetite for confronting and rebuking legislators representing the vulnerable communities Trump has targeted most often than it has for making the president mildly uncomfortable.

Although two prior presidents, Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon, faced articles of impeachment over obstruction of justice, Speaker Nancy Pelosi offered the gibberish analysis that the president was “self-impeaching,” so no actual impeachment was necessary. When confronted with yet another woman accusing the president of sexual assault, Pelosi said, “I haven’t paid much attention to it.” When the politically connected financier Jeffrey Epstein was indicted again on charges of sex-trafficking minors, and Pelosi was asked what she would do about now-ousted Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, who negotiated a previous sweetheart deal with Epstein, she said, “It’s up to the president. It’s his Cabinet,” a position indistinguishable from that of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is a member of the president’s party.

“If you start endangering children, I become a lioness,” Pelosi declared, before caving on a funding bill for border security that will do nothing to relieve the systematic abuse of migrants at the border, and whose restrictions the Department of Homeland Security is already ignoring. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic minority leader in the Senate, took the occasion of federal prosecutors in New York mysteriously closing their investigation into the president’s hush-money payments to former girlfriends to ask the FBI to look into a popular app that ages pictures of people’s faces. The president’s racist attacks on Omar and her colleagues were precipitated by Democrats leaking a poll of “white, non-college voters” supposedly showing that they might cost the party the House and the presidency. Having publicly told the school bully where and how to take their lunch money, the Democrats were surprised when he showed up.

One could protest that the Democrats’ timidity is a cold, calculated strategy. Republicans hold the Senate, the argument goes, so an impeachment inquiry would only lead to the president’s acquittal. The whiter, more conservative voters who form much of Trump’s base are geographically distributed in a way that maximizes their political power. Democrats may need to win over some of these voters, who would be alienated by impeachment, to take the White House. If the Democrats cannot hold the House, they cannot hold back Trump.

But Democrats now hold the House, and they are not holding Trump back. The president has abetted a foreign attack on American democracy, he has obstructed justice, he has vowed to turn federal law enforcement on his political enemies. There are squalid camps at the border where families are being separated, and children are being sexually assaulted, their existence justified as a necessary response to a foreign “invasion.” Trump has sought to rig American democracy in favor of white voters and refused to recognize the oversight authority of Congress, and now assails the cornerstone principle of multiracial democracy that none of us is more American than any other. What, exactly, would be enough to rouse Democrats to action?

In the face of such a challenge to the American idea, tactics become intertwined with morality. If the Democrats convince themselves that anything they do to attack the president risks alienating white voters who believe the country belongs only to them, then they will be partially responsible for the path the country is taking, and the standard it is upholding. The Democrats’ weakness has not appeased the president. Instead, it has only invited bolder challenges to democracy and the rule of law. This will not change. If congressional Democrats cannot or will not defend the principle that America belongs to all of its citizens, regardless of race, creed, color, or religion, their oaths to defend the Constitution are meaningless.

Omar must be defended, but not because of her views on Israel, gay rights, or progressive taxation. You needn’t agree with her on any of those things; in fact, you needn’t like her at all. But she must be defended, because the nature of the president’s attack on her is a threat to all Americans—black or white, Jew or Gentile—whose citizenship, whose belonging, might similarly be questioned. This is not about Omar anymore, or the other women of color who have been told by this president to “go back” to their supposed countries of origin. It is about defending the idea that America should be a country for all its people. If multiracial democracy cannot be defended in America, it will not be defended elsewhere. What Americans do now, in the face of this, will define us forever.

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citizentruth-blog · 6 years

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Time to #WalkAway: The Exodus of Blacks and Free Thinkers from the Democrat Party - PEER NEWS

New Post has been published on https://citizentruth.org/time-to-walkaway-the-exodus-of-blacks-and-free-thinkers-from-the-democrat-party/

Time to #WalkAway: The Exodus of Blacks and Free Thinkers from the Democrat Party

African Americans and free thinkers are finally leaving the left in droves.

Candace Owens, director of Turning Point USA, has been the victim of vicious liberal attacks because she is a black woman who supports President Trump.

On a recent Fox News interview, she said, “I think the black vote is going to become the most relevant by 2020” and “we’re already seeing a major shift,” referring to the exodus of African Americans from the Democrat Party. The conversation is changing. The black voters of America are no longer remaining stuck in that victim mentality courtesy of the Democrats and are opening up to the choice they have between a party that holds them back and a party that was initiated to put a stop to slavery.

Digital media has allowed for all of this to happen. Social media has given everyday people and insightful influencers alike a voice. We no longer have to stay trapped in the fake reality that CNN and others portray to us. Today, we are hearing different voices and convincing ideas from all kinds of people. And because of this, people like Owens and Kanye West are speaking out about how the Democrats have betrayed them and left them behind in their pursuit of illegal immigration, uninspiring anti-Trumpism, and open borders.

“There is going to be a major black exit from the Democrat Party, and they are going to have to actually compete for their votes in 2020,” Owens stated.

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Fox News’ Laura Ingraham had Brandon Straka on her show recently. Straka is the founder of the #WalkAway Campaign freeing disgusted Democrats to leave their party and join the winning side. He had a red pill experience in 2017 after the Donald was elected which was after he cried when Hillary Clinton lost two Novembers ago. And he decided to walk away from the Democrats because of their nasty rhetoric, incessant intolerance, name-calling and hypocritical judgment. Now, he’s not only worried about all that, but he also now fears outright violence from his former party.

“Their party has no future. It’s over,” Straka said. “People are leaving the left by tens of thousands.” He receives thousands of authentic testimonials from former Democrats regarding how the left has become intolerable to them. They don’t recognize their party anymore. What do they stand for? They hate Trump and love illegal immigrants. Anything else? Please email me or comment below and let me know!

“I want gay people, I want all people, but particularly minorities, in America to note that you have a choice. You don’t have to vote Democrat just because you’re a gay person. You don’t have to vote Democrat because you’re a black person. If you’re a minority, you have a choice, and that’s what this campaign’s about,” Straka finished.

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Rob Smith is a black, gay former Democrat. He is also an author who has become one of the many strong voices online decrying what the left has become. He calls this the “I Don’t Have to be a Democrat Just Because I’m Black Movement,” which embraces traditional values as Democrats move farther left, defending illegal aliens while taking African Americans for granted and leaving them stranded in poverty and perpetual victimhood.

“There is a movement right now of black people standing up because we are always expected to be Democrats,” Smith said. “And there is a movement right now of younger black conservatives, which I am becoming a part of, that is saying, ‘No, you don’t define who we are, you don’t define how we think; you don’t get to control and own our voices.’” As I mentioned in an article in late April, free thinking is on the rise, and many African Americans are getting red pilled with Trump in the White House and Democrats becoming the party of MS-13 and illegal aliens.

Democrats are not looking to better America in any way. As they proved by their lack of patriotism over July 4th, they despise our country and would welcome a second civil war as they did the first one. Instead of devising a winning strategy and an optimistic message to counter Trump’s rising America First voting bloc, they are attempting to legalize a swath of illegal immigrants to ensure another reliable group of Democrat voters for decades to come, just like they did with African Americans in the second half of the 20th century.

The summer of 2018 has been inspirational in many ways. In the face of liberals melting down over every Trump win and Supreme Court nominee, we have also witnessed a rise of black influencers coming out of their closet of shame in support of Donald Trump. The Democrats’ stranglehold of blacks voting unanimously for their party of hate is finally coming to an end.

This has been a long time coming.

It all started in the spring with Kanye’s internet-breaking tweet stating that he loved the way Candace Owens thinks. In another tweet on April 25th, West said, “You don’t have to agree with Trump, but the mob can’t make me not love him. We are both dragon energy. He is my brother. I love everyone. I don’t agree with everything anyone does. That’s what makes us individuals. And we have the right to independent thought.” The color of your skin does not mean you have to vote for one party or another. We need to be a country of individuals and free thinkers. If we all do what’s best for ourselves and our families, we will all be better off for it. Black people are not owned by the Democrats. They are no longer slaves to their lies.

The Democrats keep pushing 'Resist" so that America will no longer "Exist" Don't Wait until Later; Do It Now#WalkAway #RunLikeHell #DitchandSwitchNow Vote Them All Out!

— Diamond and Silk® (@DiamondandSilk) July 9, 2018

“I think there was a tripling in Trump’s approval rating when Kanye came out,” declared Ali Alexander, a 32-year-old political consultant born to an African-American mother and Arab father who saw the beginnings of this movement back in 2012 when the largest sub-demographic of blacks who voted for Romney were black men in their 20s and early 30s. According to a Pew Research exit poll, Romney achieved double-digits in the black vote against a black president. A cultural and demographic shift is underway that cannot be undone if the Democrats continue on their divisive path.

“So I knew that something bad was coming for the Democrats, and Kanye, I think, is the ball that’s bursting,” Alexander said. “It’s like, wait, when this economic pie is growing, are black people gonna have a piece of that? These demographics have been happening for decades.” To Alexander, West’s tweet was a wonderful moment that caused blacks to wonder what the welfare state does for them if they don’t plan to be on welfare. “And I think that Kanye dived on a grenade for the rest of the black community, to have them start flirting with the idea of that.”

While black unemployment is at an all-time low and jobs are available to anyone who wants to work, we are being barraged with how Trump is the new Hitler and a racist dictator who is in league with Russia. But how can Trump be a racist when he kisses black babies, and black women hug him and black men praise him for his pro-job policies? How can more and more blacks be coming around in support of Trump if he is a racist trying to keep minorities down?

Yep, #trump is a racist…. #LiberalSickness#LiberalLogic#MAGA #WalkAway #TrumpTrain pic.twitter.com/pzvLxxlhaU

— Tim Tim (@timnexis) July 9, 2018

“It has all been a lie,” said conservative black YouTuber “Uncle Hotep,” a father of two from Pennsylvania. “It’s unfortunate because a lot of us believed it blindly.” He points to the simple fact that each paycheck he gets is $100 higher than it was before the tax cut. Trump is helping not just African Americans, but all Americans. “He’s put money in my pocket.”

“I voted for Barack Obama his second term,” began conservative “Uncle Hotep,” who went on to say, “The Democrats, in my honest opinion, based on my research, I believe the Democrats have historically hated black people. And I think they still hate black people today.” It is historically accurate that Democrats defended slavery as long as possible and lamented integration of white and black society in the 1960s. They voted against not only women’s suffrage but also black citizenship. The Democrats in Congress were also mostly against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 despite the Kennedy administration’s push for it. The Republican Party was started in the mid-19th century to demolish slavery and defend individual rights for all Americans. Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican president, and he promised to free the slaves and even went to war against a slavery-loving south run by Democrats. Don’t let revisionist history fool you!

“Hotep Jesus” is a black conservative comedian and author who became an internet sensation when he went into a Starbucks and demanded a free cup of coffee, as “reparations” for slavery, since he “heard y’all was racist.” The clip is hilarious and so poignant for these politically correct times.

The African American Pastor Darrell Scott put it best during his 2016 Republican National Convention speech endorsing Trump when he said: “The truth is, the Democratic Party has failed us. America is a melting pot. We’re a country of diversity. And we stand poised to make history by standing together as Americans.” Diversity is our greatest strength not because we are all different but because we are all individuals who mostly love America and have the right to think and choose for ourselves.

As Owens recently told Fox, “I really do believe we are seeing the end of the Democratic Party as we know it.” I think there is ample evidence to prove this is surely the case.

Despite almost a month of continuous Trump is Hitler incarnate and our racist in chief coverage from the mainstream media following the separation of illegal immigrant children at the border, the president’s job approval rating has remained well above 43 percent, according to the Real Clear Politics average.

Prepare for another Trump landslide in 2020 my liberal friends.

Follow me @BobShanahanMan

FBI Jailed Black Activist 6 Months over Anti-Police Brutality Facebook Posts

#African Americans #Culture #democrats #donald trump #Free Thinkers #History #politics #Republicans #Walk Away

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esprit-de-corps-magazine · 7 years

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From Sky to Space: A Period of Mourning

By Benjamin Vermette

With the loss of David Bowie, Prince, Alan Rickman, Gene Wilder, Fidel Castro, George Michael, Muhammad Ali, Leonard Cohen, and many others, no wonder some speculate that 2016 was one of the worst years ever. Notwithstanding my opinion on 2016 — which I think was pretty great compared to darker times such as 1349 in Europe, when a quarter of Europe’s population died from the Plague — I must confess that the last two months were particularly tough in the “space” world, as we lost at least five great human beings that kept our eyes pointed toward the sky. In their memory, here is the story of the life and death of John Glenn, Vera Rubin, Carrie Fisher, Piers J. Sellers and Gene Cernan.

John Glenn (July 18, 1921 – December 8, 2016)

A true American hero and space pioneer, John Glenn was the exact type of guy you thought of as an astronaut — and that even before he became one. As soon as the United States entered World War II, Glenn joined the military with the idea of becoming a pilot. And that’s just what he did! Logging hours upon hours in the cockpit, Glenn was skillfully becoming one of the Marine Corps’ greatest fighter pilots. After World War II, Glenn flew over 60 combat missions in the Korean War, where he shot down three MiGs and earned two Distinguished Flying Crosses and eight other related medals.

Afterwards, in July 1954, he graduated from the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School in Maryland. As a test pilot, he flew various types of aircraft such as the F8U Crusader, with which he made the first supersonic transcontinental flight in 1957. Flying from southern California to New York City in less than 3 and a half hours, John Glenn made international news for the first time.

A year later, in October 1958 at the beginning of the Cold War, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was founded. The newly created agency wanted to send a man into space, and was under much pressure to accomplish this goal; it was a feat that would require preparation, experience, and caution. For those reasons, NASA probably thought they should ask well-educated and experienced test pilots to become astronauts.

Well, the thing with John Glenn is that he didn’t meet the first criteria as he lacked a degree in science. In fact, a couple of NASA’s criterions were barely met by Glenn: he was almost too old (40 years old, the limit being 40) and almost too tall (1.79 meters, the limit being 1.80). Nevertheless, Glenn was chosen to be part of a select group of 100 test pilots who met the basic qualifications. After a series of physical and mental tests, he received a call in 1959 asking him if he wanted to be a part of Project Mercury.

After several months of intense training at NASA’s various centres throughout the United States, the competition became increasingly stronger between the seven astronauts as each of them wanted — comprehensively — to become the first man in space. On April 12, 1961, this milestone was reached by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. A couple of weeks later, Alan Shepard became the first American in space, leaving only one unattained milestone at the mercy of the six remaining Mercury astronauts: the first American to orbit the Earth.

Unlike Shepard’s 15-minute spaceflight, this second flight was intended to be a five-hour mission, and the perfect guy for this was, you guessed it (or probably already know it), John Glenn. On February 20, 1962, John Glenn, watched by over 135 million people on live television, soared toward the darkness of space on a U.S. Air Force warhead customized to carry the lone man with the goal to complete three orbits of Earth safely. “Zero G and I feel fine,” were Glenn’s first words in space, showing the calm and reassuring nature he possessed even when accomplishing life glorifying exploits.

After splashing down 40 miles short of the planned landing area and being awarded NASA’s Distinguished Service Medal by President John F. Kennedy, John Glenn probably didn’t know the he would not go back to space for another 36 years. Yes, the next time he flew was in 1998 onboard Space Shuttle Discovery. Aged 77, he was NASA’s test subject in trying to better understand zero gravity’s effects on the elderly.

One of the main reasons NASA grounded Glenn in the first place for so many years wasn’t because they viewed Glenn as an incompetent, never-to-fly-again astronaut. On the contrary: as he became the most famous and praised American astronaut — even more so than Alan Shepard — NASA didn’t want to risk his life again by sending him on a risky mission to space. Regarded as a kind of national treasure that needed protection, Glenn finally retired from the agency two years after being the first U.S. astronaut to reach orbital flight to pursue a career in … politics.

In 1964, he ran for the Senate from Ohio; however, an unpredicted injury forced him to resign from the race. Ten years later, in 1974, he was finally admitted in the U.S. Senate as a Democratic member, where he served for 25 years. Note that Glenn also ran for president in 1984, but was unable to win the Democratic nomination.

After a 95-year exhaustively filled life, Glenn died on December 6, 2016, in Ohio. Surrounded by his family, the hero left behind him one of the most inspiring careers an astronaut can hope to achieve, including a second trip to space at 77 years of age after a 25-year career as a U.S. Senator. A role model for everyone, Glenn’s legacy is imperishable.

Vera Rubin (July 23, 1928 – December 25, 2016)

“Watching the stars wheel past [the] bedroom window” was enough to infuse in young Vera Rubin’s mind a spark of interest in astronomy, which later became a passion before becoming her life’s work.

Born in Pennsylvania, Vera Rubin paved the way for women’s greater acceptance in science as her work and observations are considered the driving force behind the discovery of dark matter.

In 1948, she earned her BA in astronomy from New York’s Vassar College, before applying for a graduate program in her field at Princeton. She however ended up at Cornell, where she studied under famous physicist Richard Feynman because Princeton didn’t accept women in the astronomy graduate program until 1975. Her alma maters also include Georgetown University, where she completed her doctoral degree in 1954 by attending classes at night while her husband was waiting in the car because she didn’t know how to drive.

She somehow managed to raise four children — they followed in their mother’s footsteps as each acquired a PhD in natural sciences or mathematics — while focusing on her research and the assistant professorship she earned at Georgetown in 1962.

Now let me resume the outstanding research she is most famous for, which seems even more praiseworthy considering her status as a woman in the male-dominated sphere of 1960s astronomical research.

According to Kepler’s laws of motions, the further away a planet is from the sun, the slower it should orbit around it. This implies that innermost planets — such as Mercury, Venus and Earth go around our Sun faster than the outermost planets — Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. If you think about it, it indeed makes sense: the closer a planet is to its star, the stronger it is pulled because of the more intense gravity, so in order to keep moving around the star and not to fall on its fiery surface, it must move faster.

Rubin thought — and rightly so — that if this were true for solar systems and planetary systems, then it must be true for a galaxy. Like any other good scientist, she started observing galaxies using a telescope in order to refute or confirm her hypothesis (that the outermost stars in a galaxy must move slower around the centre of it than the stars that are closer). Astonishingly, she observed that the outermost stars were moving so fast that if the mass of the galaxy were only that of the stars and dust she could see — or everything else one can directly observe — then either the galaxy would have torn apart or Newton’s law of gravitation was flawed. Rest assured, the latter possibility wasn’t the one that explained the observations: gravity still works. Rather, Rubin embraced another possibility, a much darker one, which later proved to be right: dark matter.

The reason why Rubin’s calculations weren’t working was because she didn’t account for all the mass of the galaxies she observed; she was only taking into account normal matter (stars, planets, dust, etc.), whereas dark matter was to be considered as well.

On large-scale systems, such as galaxies, dark matter’s effects are so notable that they significantly increase the system’s mass, consequently increasing the speed of the celestial objects that orbit around its centre (in galaxies, the celestial objects are mostly stars).

While we now know that dark matter contributes to roughly 25% of the ‘content’ of the Universe, concretely explaining what it exactly consists of is a more arduous task. Note that ‘normal’ matter makes about 5% of the Universe, while dark energy — a different thing than dark matter — makes up 75%.

As a leading female scientist, Vera Rubin obstinately persevered to finally find a satisfying answer to her observations. She was indeed right when she said that “science progresses best when observations force us to alter out preconceptions.”

She passed away on Christmas Day, leaving the gift to find dark matter’s nature to the future generation of astronomers.

Carrie Fisher (October 21, 1956 – December 27, 2016)

We all remember watching Star Wars IV: A New Hope for the first time and feeling impressed when this beautiful, charismatic and powerful leader named Princess Leia famously recorded herself using R2-D2 to seek help: “Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope.”

However, even if she was Princess Leia in the hearts and minds of many, Carrie Fisher was a lot more. Actress, author and humourist, nothing seemed to be quite enough. In June, she announced she was going to be columnist for The Guardian, providing help to people suffering from mental health problems. A genuine altruist, Carrie Fisher inspired many.

Unfortunately, just as Princess Leia’s mother died of exhaustion shortly after her birth (see Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith), Carrie Fisher’s mom, Hollywood legend Debbie Reynolds, passed shortly after her death, on December 28.

She will be missed, and her legacy on and off the screen will be remembered, and the rebellion will persist as long as peace is not restored in the galaxy, as long as the Force is unbalanced, as long as it is the will of Princess Leia’s soul.

Piers J. Sellers (April 11, 1955 – December 23, 2016)

A NASA astronaut and veteran of three Space Shuttle missions, Piers J. Sellers wasn’t like the others: instead of encouraging us to look up and to dream about the wonders of space, he urged us to look down at the Earth and to realize the seriousness of its disastrously changing climate.

Born in England, Sellers moved to the United States in 1982 to work as a climate researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Maryland. He applied to be an astronaut in 1984, but was unfortunately turned down because he lacked a U.S. citizenship. In 1991, he was granted U.S. citizenship and, five years later, his application to NASA’s astronaut program was accepted.

His first spaceflight was in 2002 on Space Shuttle Atlantis. He conducted his first spacewalk on his inaugural flight, logging more than 20 hours outside the spacecraft with a total of three sorties. He later flew on Discovery in 2006 and again on Atlantis in 2010. A year later, in 2011, he announced his retirement from NASA, where he had also been director of the Earth Science Division at GSFC.

In January 2016, he announced he had been diagnosed with cancer with only a few months to live, thus motivating him to “live life at 20 times normal speed.”

Sellers was an astronaut, but his legacy will mostly be remembered in terms of climate, as he was an expert in the field. He appeared on Leonardo DiCaprio’s 2016 climate-change documentary Before the Flood and was addressed by many as a driving force in climate research.

By seeing the Earth as a fragile blue rock flying through darkness, he thought that, for the sake of humanity, we need to protect it, for he knew it was the only place we could live. He had a privileged perspective in addressing climate change, so let his message be clear:

“Here are the facts: The climate is warming. We’ve measured it, from the beginning of the industrial revolution to now. It correlates so well with emissions and with theory, we know within almost an absolute certainty that it’s us who are causing the warming and the CO2 emissions. Because it’s warming, the ice is melting, and because the ice is melting and the oceans are warming, the sea is rising.”

Eugene Cernan (March 14, 1934 – January 16, 2017)

The last person I shall address in this eulogistic article is the last man to have walked on the moon, Eugene Andrew Cernan, or simply Gene. The Gene. As one of my favourite astronauts, Gene Cernan is the exact type of guy every young man wants to be at some point in his life: cocky and arrogant, but also crazy smart and skilled.

Like many Apollo-era astronauts, young Gene Cernan was a Boy Scout as he grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. In 1952, he went on to study at Purdue University, earning a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering in 1956, before earning a scholarship to become a U.S. Navy ensign. Two years later, Cernan became a naval aviator, while starting to study for a master’s degree in aeronautical engineering, which he earned from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in 1963. As a pilot, he logged more than 5,000 hours in an aircraft, 4,800 of which were in a jet.

In October 1963, shortly after earning his master’s degree, he was selected as a NASA astronaut alongside Buzz Aldrin — the second man on the moon — and 12 other men in what was known as NASA Astronaut Group 3. It would be interesting to consider how devoted to space exploration and how courageous these men were to serve as “spacemen” because being an astronaut in the 1960s wasn’t as safe as it is now. For instance, from the 14 men that were selected as part of NASA Astronaut Group 3, only 10 went to space — the other four were killed during training, either in a jet crash or in a capsule fire during a mission simulation.

Cernan’s first spaceflight wasn’t actually supposed to be his first: he was selected as backup crew for NASA’s Gemini 9 manned spaceflight mission, which was scheduled to launch in June 1966. However, Cernan and his colleague Thomas Stafford became the prime crew when Elliot See and Charles Bassett were killed in a T-38 Talon plane crash in Missouri. During this spaceflight, Cernan became the second American and the third person ever to perform an extra-vehicular activity (or EVA, a fancy word for spacewalk), but a couple of things went wrong and he was forced to cut the EVA short.

He served as Lunar Module Pilot for Apollo 10 on his second spaceflight in May 1969 — two months before Neil Armstrong’s “giant leap for mankind.” Cernan’s spaceflight was a trial run — except for the actual landing and walking on the moon part — for the history-making Apollo 11, in which Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed and walked on the moon for the first time. Cernan once told journalists that NASA intentionally cut in the Apollo 10 Lunar Module’s fuel in order to prevent the crew from landing on the moon, because had NASA given the crew enough fuel to land on the moon and come back, Neil Armstrong probably wouldn’t be as popular.

His third — and last — spaceflight was in December 1972, when he served as commander of the last lunar landing mission, Apollo 17. He is one of the only three astronauts that went to the moon twice. Note that Cernan declined an offer to be the Lunar Module Pilot of Apollo 16 because he wanted to command his own mission.

The last words spoken on the surface of the moon were Cernan’s:

“Bob, this is Gene, and I'm on the surface; and, as I take man's last step from the surface, back home for some time to come — but we believe not too long into the future — I'd like to just [say] what I believe history will record: that America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow. And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus–Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. Godspeed the crew of Apollo 17.”

We hope you were right, Gene.

He passed on January 16 at age 82. I was particularly saddened when I heard about his death, knowing that Gene wasn’t so keen about his title of ‘last man on the moon’: rather, he was “quite disappointed [to be] the last man on the moon.”

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