Getting Out of Here

A couple days ago, I read a post by Sara Benincasa about Ray Bradbury's political opinions and she seems to have adopted a sweeter perspective on something that had kind of depressed me. It wasn't news to me--I actually have video from Comic-Con of Bradbury talking about how Ronald Reagan was the greatest president this country ever had because he lowered taxes and "gave the money back to the people." I didn't upload that portion of the video because I didn't feel like broadcasting Ray Bradbury talking like a moron, but I guess it's not like I really had an exclusive on the material.

The only possible positive spin I can give it in my mind is speculating that Bradbury has a slightly ulterior motive in being vehemently Republican. He made the comment about Reagan after talking again about how important he thought it was to colonise Mars--he made it clear he thought it was the only way for the human race to survive. Republicans seem to be better for the space programme almost by default--because one kind of has to treat problems having to do with things like healthcare and civil rights as though they don't exist in order to spend a significant amount of the budget on NASA. I wonder if the only way we'll get real space travel is by letting a lot of things go to shit. On the other hand, the world's so fucked up, and everything seems to get gridlocked when Democrats are in charge, that it's probably impossible to actually improve things. I wonder if it's actually possible that spending the insane amount of money necessary to create human Martian real estate might actually be the only way to save mankind--Republicans would be the only ones stupid enough to do it, but it seems like most of humanity's big accomplishments these days are stupid.

I have to admit, I think it would be fucking awesome if we could colonise space. I've been watching Gunbuster again lately, and one of the things I love about that series, and about Ray Bradbury, is the beautiful, passionate perspective on the human race attaining space travel.