#anyway the fact that the fiftieth anniversary occurred during the trump regime prolly had no bearing on my cynicism I'm sure

[arctic-hands]

Not to be a downer and this isn't an indictment of people celebrating this, but I remember watching an as-it-happened documentary (my favorite type of documentary tbh) on the fiftieth anniversary of the Moon Landing and then halfway into it the spell it had over me snapped and I just started thinking "What did the people fighting in Vietnam, both sides, think of all this? Where was that 'moment of global unity' everyone has been talking about for the last fifty years that was allegedly during this moment? What about the people slaving away in factories or in fields or prison during this? What about the people who couldn't afford a TV because of rampant wealth inequality? There was so much vitriol in this moment just for people who wanted to be treated equal but I'm told the world as a whole and America in particular had come together."

I love as-it-happened documentaries because I love putting myself in moments that witness history in the making, good or bad, but I couldn't reconcile this idealized version of what I've been told my entire life and the historical truths I knew were going on as Americans landed on the moon