The lunatics have landed

I remember the moon landing very well. I was nine years old. I can remember too my sense of outrage and disillusion. ‘This is a blatant violation of the moon’s dignity and sovereignty,’ I told my parents, as the astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong attempted to secure the US flag to the lunar surface. ‘An act of imperialistic, Zionist barbarism and a statement of intent from the American government that it intends to export its white supremacy throughout the known galaxy. You will note that no people of colour were chosen as astronauts, nor women, nor people with fibromyalgia.’

A day or two later, when I had been let out of my bedroom, I informed them that the whole thing had not actually taken place, but was a sham filmed on a Hollywood lot for the benefit of Nasa, the industrial–military complex and Mossad. ‘Did you see the angles of the shadows cast by the astronauts? Klieg lights, you credulous fools.’ So young, and yet so woke.

Hollywood has just made another film about that moon landing and it seems to have been scripted by someone with a very similar mindset to the one I had then. It could not be otherwise, I suppose, these days. First Man purports to be a biopic of the aforementioned Armstrong, but omits entirely the second most important thing he ever did. There is footage of him landing on the moon, with Aldrin, but the film makers quite deliberately omitted to show the flag being planted on the dusty surface. This was because, according to one of the cretinous stars of the film, Ryan Gosling, the moon landings were not about American triumphalism, but something that was good for the whole of humanity. And so they excised the bit about the flag, including showing the astronauts saluting the flag, because it did not fit in with their political agenda and, being liberals, they think that what actually happened, i.e.