Last week was a bit like this Spring. Shoots of green punched up through the dry grass of our winter of autocracy. Four Astronauts and thousands of publically supported scientists performed a near miraculous journey around the moon and out into deep space. The crew performed so beautifully and represented the virtues of science and diversity and international cooperation with skill and dignity. They tuned their feelings to their intellects and gave youth a quick peak at what it might mean to be a good adult. In Hungary, a miracle occured. Democracy give us a look at how democracy can reassert itself even after 16 years of autocracy. The green traces of this Spring of hope mean so much and might inspire a hunger in this nation for a reset.

Spring in the west right now is much like the our current political situation. The green shoots of grass and tree buds call out hope, but the grass is dry, reservoirs low and snow pack melting fast and early. The summer may be survivable, but it will call for conservation, public cooperation, and careful discipline of resource usage. The achievement of the astronauts will soon be coopted by an administration that has opposed science, diversity, and lacks all the skills of cooperation necessary to make that wonderful space achievement even remotely possible. Hungary will have its problems by August and life will certainly be imperfect and even precarious. But there is hope.

Modest Proposal for Maintaining Good

The Artemis mission nailed down for the edification of all the power and necessity of authentic science, genuine cooperation, dignity and international respect. The first proposal is not to let those lessons go to waste. Don’t get distracted by the cost of the mission for our Government is wasting budgets like NASA daily on immigration policing, and one man wars. We need the deeper virtues of democracy in this dry dangerous spring. Secondly don’t expect all to go smoothly in Hungary. After all Hungary appears to have chosen democracy and we know from experience every democracy is going to struggle. The wits say don’t watch them make the sausage you eat because it isn’t pretty. Same thing with democracy, it is never pretty or perfect, but it is the only form of governance that can contain the energies of the hungry human heart. Feeding the heart would be so good.