We Need Another Moonshot

Finding lessons from the past that can bring us together in the future.

It’s hard to find feel-good scenes in a documentary about a serial killer, but the final episode of the Netflix docuseries Night Stalker has some. The series explores a spate of brutal killings and sexual assaults in 1985 Los Angeles that left law enforcement baffled because the victims didn’t fit into any pattern with regard to race, sex, or even age. When the LAPD eventually identified Richard Ramirez as the killer, he was still at-large, so law enforcement put his mug shot on every news broadcast and print outlet they could find. Stepping off of a bus from Arizona into downtown L.A., Ramirez suddenly found himself recognized by everyone, and tried to flee on foot into a neighborhood — only to find himself chased, knocked down, and put under citizen's arrest until the police came. By the time Ramirez made it to the jail, a crowd of citizens comprising every demographic in L.A.’s diverse city had gathered around the building to denounce the man who had terrorized their city for months. It’s difficult not to experience a sense of connection and solidarity with them, even watching through a screen almost forty years later.

Night Stalker is a great reminder that people often come together in times of great tragedy and great triumph. As Gen Xers, we remember the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan in 1981:  Families from all over the world (including India) called (at long-distance rates) to express their condolences, assuming that as U.S. citizens, our families would be distraught, regardless of to which party they belonged. There was the Challenger explosion of 1986, which was felt by the entire country and led to reflective discussions in our school classrooms because Christa McAuliffe, chosen as the first teacher to go to space, was “our” teacher, too. 

Sometimes the tragedies started local, quickly making the national news: in 1987, we remember rooting for two-year-old Jessica McClure, a.k.a. “Baby Jessica,” who fell and became wedged in a well in her family’s backyard.  Americans cheered as emergency responders pulled her out 58 hours later (evidence that great tragedy can turn into great triumph), while President Reagan declared that “Everybody in America became godmothers and godfathers of Jessica.”

On the triumph side, there was the “Miracle on Ice” when the United States scored the victory shot in the final seconds of the semifinal hockey game against the Soviet Union at the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid, New York. I mean, can you really watch this scene and not root against the Commies? The year 1985 brought us USA For Africa, an effort to raise money for starving children, in which our nation’s favorite musicians collaborated to sing “We Are the World.”  Rock, pop, country (well, everyone except Waylon Jennings). There were the scenes of East and West Germans tearing down the Berlin Wall in 1989. Sports, the arts, the Russians…there were so many phenomena that united us back then.

Well, well, well… meaning that in all three senses of the word:  Reagan began a lot of his sentences with the interjection, “Well.”  Back then, we seemed like we were doing quite well.  And Baby Jessica came out okay from the well.  

Well, well, well, if they happened today, it’s hard to imagine any of these events having the same effect.  Would Ramirez be co-opted by Fox News as an example of Democrats’ “failed immigration policies” at the border? (Ramirez was born in El Paso, Texas—a U.S. citizen—but that minor detail wouldn’t stop them.) Would conspiracy theorists claim that John Hinckley Jr. was a Democrat under orders from the Deep State to assassinate Reagan? Would the rescue of Baby Jessica spark controversy because the Woke Left would decry the resources being spent on a White baby (and decry our capitalization of “White”)?  Would half of our politicians be rooting for Russia to beat us at the Olympics? We think the answer to all of these is… probably. What happened to us? CAN’T WE JUST ALL GET ALONG?

Despite a primarily American-dominated global monoculture, we largely live in isolated demographic pockets thanks to media fragmentation.  Social media algorithms have gotten so good that the front page you see is different from the front page I see.  It’s actually much more sinister than that: On social media, even the comments you see are different from the comments I see.  So, our reality really is different.  There are not many stories a majority of Americans are following at any given time, and even if we are, we’re experiencing it differently, not only on Fox News and MSNBC, but also on TikTok and Instagram.  This feeds the problem that half of the country doesn’t even believe the same narrative as the other half.  Finally—and this analogy should ring true since superhero movies began in the aforementioned era we were describing—we can’t even agree on a national origin story.  Is the USA the shining beacon on a hill, where all people are created equal?  Or is it just another product of white supremacy?  

Maybe the answer is somewhere in the middle. Part of what made it possible for us to converge in triumph and tragedy is that there was a gray area, and we lived in it, recognized it, disliked parts of it, but loved America regardless. Somewhere along the way, we’ve forgotten how to handle nuance and complexity. Not everything was black and white—even when our country was (even more) divided into Black and White. Sound bites and emojis have alienated us from the humanity that has, until now, allowed us to navigate a confusing world where we can both disagree on major social and political issues with our fellow citizens with conviction, but remain fiercely patriotic in unity, especially against existential challenges to our democratic (small “d”) experiment.

Donald Trump’s claim to “Make America Great Again” harkens back to a mythical American utopia that never existed. But perhaps a little nostalgia isn’t so bad. We can learn from our past, even before the great ’80s of our childhood. We think a place to start is 1969. There was a lot going on in 1969 to which we might relate today: racial division, war protests, distrust of government. Like today, the world was on fire, Americans were divided, and it wasn’t clear whether there was a light at the end of the tunnel. 

That backdrop makes it all the more extraordinary that Americans found a way to come together around a singular historic achievement that encapsulates the lost unity we are talking about: NASA's Apollo 11 mission, which successfully landed humans on the moon in 1969. This milestone wasn't merely a feat of engineering; it symbolized an era of bold ambition, unity, and scientific breakthrough. More importantly, the moon landing became a defining moment in our American history, demonstrating that when people rallied behind a common, extraordinary goal, we could achieve what once seemed impossible. Despite the many things that divided us as Americans, the Apollo mission united us across race, class, and religion with a shared sense of purpose, pride, and curiosity. Quite frankly, it even united the world: more than 600 million people watched Neal Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin take the first steps on the moon, and felt ownership over that achievement. That day, everyone felt American—or, better put, human. 

Maybe we’re romanticizing it—and there was a lot of stuff that sucked in America in the ‘60s—but winning the race to put a man on the moon was something we could all celebrate (well, everyone except the Russians). Perhaps it was because the idea of triumph in this relatively unknown domain allowed us to forget, albeit briefly, the tragedies that divided us here at home, on Earth.  

We need another moonshot. What would that look like? We’re open to your ideas.