Why did boomers decide America's purpose wasn't space exploration...

Why did boomers decide America's purpose wasn't space exploration, science and great achievements but instead to celebrate diversity, gay pride and memes?

I mean those things are nice too, I guess, but to declare it is the ultimate good in the world and decide that everyone has to be on board or they will be falsely accused of being fascists, socially ostracized and fired and there should be no way to opt out seems a little extreme, especially considering we could have cured cancer by now had we not wasted resources on it.

What is the historical precedent for this social transformation?

>Why did boomers decide America's purpose wasn't space exploration, science and great achievements but instead to celebrate diversity, gay pride and memes?

Citation?

Also: Vietnam. A decision by MUH GREATEST GENERATION, not boomers.

Pentagon papers essentially confirmed the inner workings of the US Gov that decisions like Vietnam are made without any consultation or input from the people they're suppose to represent. In the wake of the Iraq wars I don't know how anyone can blame 'the people' with a straight face for decisions agreed upon and pursued by an unaccountable ruling class.

when the new left students of the 60s first started to take leadership roles in government, finance, culture, and academics. Remember, Political Correctness and building up self esteem didnt start becoming a thing until the late 80s.

>in the wake of Iraq wars I don't know how anyone can blame the people...

Dude. How old were you in 2003? Do you know what kind of public support the Iraq invasion had?

You must be very young the second Iraq war was protested and all the same loudmouth contrarian faggots who claim to hate the deep state now were giggling and calling us terrorists for opposing another war over energy back then

his point is that the government goes into unpopular wars and dont give a shit how much the people dont like it.

Also coincidentally when neoliberalism took off...

Boomers felt/feel extremely accomplished. Like they were on the peak of human civilization. "Why do we need science, space, and further progression of humanity when we already have everything we need?"
They focused on helping those lesser off than them because they felt that there was more than enough of everything. They were so high on themselves that they believed scarcity didn't exist. It explains why even today, when boomers are faced with a problem, instead of thinking hard about how to solve it, their first instinct is to throw money at it.

>unpopular wars

In April 2003, 80% of the public backed military action in Iraq. And yes, it's their fault they're too fucking stupid to think critically about muh WMD.

>space exploration

Perhaps because there is nothing of value in space? Lats time I checked, normal humans cannot live for very long on Moon or Mars, so no space colonization anytime soon. Could that be the reason I wonder?

there's an absolutely massive amount of resources in space

You're a dunce if you think some transient opinion polls conducted after months of deliberate fear mongering in the wake of the biggest terrorist attack aided by a cooperative media who towed the administration line and reported false and misleading information at every turn in support of a policy that had already been decided on behind the scenes is the same as informed consent.

>i-its all the evil capitalist guys, its totally not us!

Companies do this shit specifically because of the culture the new left has created.

If we could get one (1) asteroid from the asteroid belt we would have enough iron to crash the world economy

The New Left is cancer, I don’t know where you got the impression that I liked them.

>when my comrades ACTUALLY RELIED on the oncoming West European revolution

We still undertake large scale space exploration projects at the national (and increasingly the private) level. The thing is, people stopped giving a shit after Skylab, or even Apollo 17. Society is so prosperous that we can focus on spade exploration and public welfare.

W-w-what am I reading, user-kun?

>Why did boomers decide America's purpose wasn't space exploration, science and great achievements but instead to celebrate diversity, gay pride and memes?
They didn't. You're putting forth a much-too-broad and inaccurate generalization.

>there is nothing of value in space?

Asteroid mining could single-handedly end our scarcity problems before they actually begin and give humanity a near infinite supply of resources.

what scarcity, apart from fresh water?

theyre abberations. like a weak crop

Because agreeing with people makes you popular.

They won't respect you for correcting them and proving them wrong and there are no immediate consequences for letting them go unchallenged.

but...

isn't aluminium extremely scarce and we have to recycle it to keep costs affordable?
be nice to have gold, silver, platinum, lithium, and other various electronic components be worth basically nothing

Gold and platinum just as two examples.

... if you give them an inch they will take a mile, they will start making increasingly unjust demands and declaring you to be an even bigger villain who owes them yet more until you wake up one day to find they hate you just for existing and nothing you give will ever be enough

I don't understand people like this. Isn't it a basic evolutionary instinct to ensure the survival of your bloodline? Colonising space is the only chance humanity has of long term survival. Are they just too stupid to think that far ahead?

It would give us enough gold to make Peter Schiff suicide.

Vietnam war was ended by boomers getting elected into the congress though. Literally if it wasn't for boomers we wouldn't lose the war.

so why not just research space mining itself instead of spending millions to send mathematicians into space so they can eat food from tubes? wouldn't any mining be done by robots or remotely-operated technologies?

You weren't going to win that war in any way.

Proof?

the technology is barely getting to the point we can think about it today
We mostly send researchers into space to find out how things react in zero gravity so when we go into the phase we start using stuff we don't run into stupid problems we didn't anticipate.
Also, easier to sell to the public you want to build space cities rather than you telling them you want to build highly complex infrastructure that will cost a lot in the short term but in the long term will basically create post scarcity for several centuries.
Heck, normies still want to colonize Titan in their scifi instead of do the logical thing and use it as a massive autonomous factory/ computer.

Because you had no way to decisively defeat the insurgency, and they were not going to give up, and you were never going to stay there just suffering indefinite losses. Insurgency 101.

boomers were the generation that marked satan taking full control over america

The new left is expressly anti socialist and accommodates our corporate hegemony

But the insurgency was defeated by 1970, Viet Cong was hardly a threat anymore.
>indefinite losses
Like what? Viet Cong never really scored any victories on the battlefield, there's a reason why after getting blown the fuck up in Cambodia they pretty much ceased to exist and we only fought the NVA from then on.

Diversity is the greatest achievement of modern American culture. Hundred years later and your materialistic nonsense will be forgotten, but the diversity will be remembered as the golden age of our human culture and necessary part of life.

>our leaders need voters' consent to go to war

What in US history makes you think that is remotely the case?

Are you being retarded on purpose?

I'm including the NVA is that for blatantly obvious reasons. The intensity of the war was not decreasing, and US casualties only dropped when troop numbers were decreased.

>army regulars of a sovereign country count as "insurgency"
This is why nobody takes you seriously.
>intensity of the war was not decreasing
The conflict outright STOPPED in '73 and didn't resume until after we left.

Cultural exploration > Cosmic exploration
There is more untapped potential inside us than in cold void of space. The technology already advances too fast, but culture lags behind. There is a dire need for institutions that can bring order into cultural changes, like science bring order into advances in our technology.

>i-its not our fault I swear!

Marxists have always been stooges for the bourgeoise. Lenin represented German industrialists and Swedish bankers more than he represented Russian workers.

Alright user, how was America going to win the Vietnam war?

I remember when Lenin fought against Orthodox Church to defeat Patriarchy, but I guess some of the modern feminists lost nuances of the term in the translation.

Act the smartass if you want, but the point is obviously it was an unconventional war that you had no idea how to win.
>The conflict outright STOPPED in '73 and didn't resume until after we left.
Yes I suppose the 20-40,000 ARVN soldiers who were dying every year throughout the whole period just stubbed their toe or something? You're a literal retard.

By uniting Vietnam under southern leadership. The Vietnamese wanted national unification more than they wanted communism.

Fighting the NVA was very much conventional. Read a book.

>By uniting Vietnam under southern leadership.
Yes but how were you going to do that.
Not really, no. Try serving in the army then talk shit.

Which is why Ho Chi Minh was a nationalist first, a communist second. And clearly had the support of most Vietnamese.

I have served. Have you?

Sure have.

>Fighting the NVA was very much conventional

LOL. Yea, when they actually exposed themselves in the field. Which happened like twice.

is this advanced sarcasm

I was under impression that deep state and bunch of oligarchs run everything and they just invented identity politics as a way to distract people.

>he doesn't even know the history of Viet Nam before 1960

Ew.

All leftists are neo liberal, and all neo liberals are leftist

>the Easter Offensive never happened

The left has always been like this, Stalin was best friends with pedophiles for fuck sake

>one offensive makes it a conventional war

>Gibs me dat Moon Money, selfish-ass crackas!

You're on a website with a loli mascot you dumbass.

this family.

>leftypol literally defending Stalin the paedophile

this is a blue board, you pervert
Veeky Forums is not for lewds.
only headpats.

It's even worse than that. IP was invented by the people to distract themselves. The oligarchy doesn't have the imagination for this sort of thing. Well fed comfortable people with no real worries needed conflict and tension to give meaning to their lives, and so created it. Ask yourself how many genuinely poor people are into this stuff. It's not big in india (but is in westernised NRI). African immigrants don't partake until they are second generation and comfortable

Science advanced and we now know that being gay is not a medical condition, so there is that. You can't be true to science if you want it to be your purpose.

What's worse is that light theme, you degenerate

>being gay is not a medical condition
it's strongly associated with a slew of medical and mental conditions

It's a mental illness

> What is the historical precedent for this social transformation?

The Cold War and Soviet infiltration of American fringe movements in the 1960s designed to cause unrest in the U.S.

Diversity/social welfare and space exploration are not mutually exclusive issues, we can be a society which does both.

The problem is that for whatever you need to do in space, it’s just plain more cost effective to send a robot. Think about the Mars rover, it’s basically a science lab on wheels with a robot arm that can do anything you’d need a person to do. Even though it’s not nearly as sexy exploring the solar system with probes instead of space cowboys, it’s just orders of magnitude more practical and cost-effective. Plus after beating the Russians to the moon took the romance out of space travel, getting the general public to tune into the manned space program is just an exercise in futility.

Another issue is technology. We can’t even build a self-sustaining biodome on Earth, what makes us think we can on Mars or Titan? Chemical rockets are slow and charge by the gram for payload. So much of what’s possible for space depends on the research and development taking place in Earth based labs and universities. As we invent stronger propulsion systems, tougher construction materials, and more miniaturized electronics, more possibilities open up for us. We don’t want to be like ancient Micronesians, dying out because we spread ourselves too thin, so even if we’re sending less people into space, investments in ground based education can still play a huge role in expanding the possibilities of space within our grasp.

Now also factor in the fact that every president since Kennedy himself has actually gutted NASA’s budget, especially Republicans (Nixon himself was convinced that space exploration was a waste of taxpayer dollars) and you realize that there is simply no correlation between social liberalism and a lack of interest in space. Sure you get ones whose attitude is “let’s help the poor instead of exlore space” but then you also get conservatives whose attitude is “let’s help the rich instead of explore space.”

>obese
>hungry

like how hcm was a committed communist?

homosexuality is a mental illness.

>REEEEEEEEEE in the distance

Truly, the homosexual is a creature unworthy of pity.

>If we could get one (1) asteroid from the asteroid belt we would have enough iron to crash the world economy

Which is precisely why there's no economic incentive to go to space.

>Be pioneering entrepreneur and spend trillions of dollars building the infrastructure to support sending the heavy machinery needed to mine shit in space into space.
>An economy shattering wealth of materials are now at your finger tips.
>You never actually make a profit though because the material you mine is now worthless as there is so much of it, and every ton you bring back to Earth further crashes the value of the good you're trying to sell.
>Your debts never get paid off and your whole business venture collapses along with the economy.

Say what you are saying is, we will never see the Dead Space universe in this timeline?

>Colonising space is the only chance humanity has of long term survival.
Utter nonsense.

Do you have any idea who HCM was? Do you know how early he was leading an independence movement? HCM was the leading figure of Vietnamese independence before the United States entered WWII. Think about that.

Sol will implode at some point. It is imperative that humanity find another base of operations.

>Sol will implode at some point
>He seriously thinks that because the sun will die in 5 billion years it's a wise investment of 21st century Man's time and energy to pursue space exploration.

Ah your right, just keep passing the buck to the next generation when we could get a headstart right now. This is the practical thinking that I expect from Veeky Forums

His point is a valid one: life on Earth still has about a billion years of history left... That’s a really freaking long time for us to make arrangements for an astronomical event which would still be billions of years away. I mean hell, even a measly 5 million years is longer than the total amount of time there have been humans, but would still probably be plenty of time for us to plan the eventual evacuation of the Earth.

Meanwhile, there are more pressing issues to attend do, like the fact that we’re living in the middle of the 6th great mass extinction of life on Earth, and that is far more likely to kill us than anything from space.

>bitching about identity politics.

It isn't a thing that only happened in recent times.

>African immigrants don't partake until they are second generation and comfortable.
>It's not big in india.

Extremely bullshit on both parts.

People still bitch about this?

cringe

lol he piggy