In 1968, a moon shot brought hope. Did Artemis II? | Will Bunch Newsletter

Happy Power Plant Day to all who celebrate it, which outside of Donald Trump is pretty much nobody. This newsletter goes out less than eight hours before the deadline that America’s weakened strongman has set for Iran to reopen the oil turnpike that is the Strait of Hormuz, lest U.S. bombers “reign” [sic] down destruction on that nation’s bridges and power plants, which would be a war crime. It’s a grim day for humanity, yet there is also cause for hope. Read on.

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The previous 12 months had been marked by a war halfway across the world where America’s enemy seemed to be gaining the upper hand, shocking acts of political violence, unrest, and mass protests. But in a deep and dark December, a depressed U.S. populace took solace from an unexpected place.

They looked up.

The annus horribilis in question was 1968, when the Viet Cong’s Tet Offensive, the assassinations of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy Sr. and the riots after MLK’s killing and at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago left citizens feeling dazed and confused.

Yet those painful cross-currents buffeted a United States that was, in a lot of ways, different from the one we inhabit today — more confident in the shadows of victory in World War II, and still in love with public education, science, and the idea of American know-how. The epitome of that good and seemingly lost America — the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the race to put humans on the moon — was nearing its zenith at the end of 1968.

On that Dec. 21, Apollo 8 blasted off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral with three astronauts — Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders — aiming to become the first humans to fly to the moon, circle it in orbit, and return safely to Earth. The world watched the lift-off with a mix of awe and high-anxiety. Just 23 months earlier, the first three Apollo astronauts had died in a horrific fire during a Florida training exercise. The Apollo 8 spacemen gave their own mission a 50-50 chance.

Apollo 8’s blend of history and danger was must-see TV, and as their capsule approached the moon just as family and friends gathered for Christmas Eve, it attracted what at that time was the world’s largest television audience ever (to be eclipsed seven months later when Apollo 11’s astronauts landed and walked on the moon).

How riveting was it? I was 9 years old, nearly 10, and my parents had invited over some friends who raced through a Christmas Eve meal to head down to our linoleum family room to watch on our color TV console. During a commercial, I sneaked upstairs for a Christmas cookie and discovered the candles from their unmonitored Advent centerpiece had set the dining room table on fire. That potential disaster was quickly extinguished so we could return to the real drama.

When Apollo 8 first circled around the dark side of the moon, the inability to make radio contact, although expected, was a moment of extreme tension, since even a slight miscalculation could have sent the capsule into deep space or crashing into the lunar surface. “We’ll see you on the other side,” Lovell radioed back.

The world’s sigh was palpable when they emerged. Still, it would be two things that would burnish Apollo 8 in the memory of everyone who was alive to see it. The first came that Christmas Eve when the three men read aloud the first 10 verses of the Book of Genesis, “In the beginning, God created heaven and earth...” That brought tears to the eyes of ground control operators in Houston, to ABC anchor Frank Reynolds — “God bless them, unbelievable,” the normally jaded newsman gasped — and to many viewers, even non-believers.

The mission’s even more permanent monument was the photo “Earthrise” that Anders captured of the distant earth as Apollo 8 emerged from the dark side, revealing our planet not as the bad place it had seemed for much of 1968 but as a miraculous blue marble of life amid the endless void of deep space.

“A year of trouble and turbulence, anger and assassination, is now coming to an end in incandescent triumph,” the famed CBS anchor Walter Cronkite said in an on-air commentary. “Apollo 8 achieved every one of it’s major mission aims — and something else. It lifted the spirits of earthbound mortals, and carried them, too — if only for a while — out of their own horizons. ‘Let their be light in the firmament of the heavens,’ said Genesis."

I — and, I imagine, a lot of boomers — have been thinking a lot about Apollo 8 over the last few days as we watch NASA’s Artemis II, which incredibly is the first manned lunar mission in 54 years, retrace that historic 1968 voyage and, in distance, boldly go a tad farther out into space on its lunar flyby.

Last Wednesday, as I drove back from a reporting trip to Vineland in South Jersey, I listened on my car radio and was shocked how the flashback to that childlike wonder and the stomach butterflies felt as the four-person crew blasted off from the now hallowed Florida coastline.

Like 1968? Sort of, although the intensifying war in Iran and the 24/7 megalomania of the American president makes it hard to escape into the beauty of the cosmos for more than a 15-minute segment at a time. Still, 2026’s 10-day, NASA-led moon mission unexpectedly feels in a lot of ways like the America that used to be, and a more joyful nation that many of us want us to become once again.

The Artemis II mission — conceived and initiated long before the chaotic, authoritarian return of Trump, and seemingly barely on his radar screen — isn’t just making history with its distance record. Astronauts Victor Glover and Christina Koch are the first Black American and the first woman to travel beyond the earth’s gravity.

“You all look beautiful,” Glover said from space last week when asked what he sees when he looks at Earth. “You know, homo sapiens is all of us, no matter where you are or what you look like, we’re all one people...This brought us together and showed what we can do, not just putting our differences aside but putting our differences together to build on the strengths and accomplish something great.”

What Glover and the rest of the crew epitomize isn’t identity politics but a kind of a natural, even casual diversity, more like the fictional space utopia of TV’s 1960s’ Star Trek than the real world politics of a regime determined to crush racial and gender equity programs, with a “War” Secretary who forces out Black and women generals who don’t look like him.

Artemis II isn’t just diverse but international. It turns out that in space, Canada isn’t the demented Trump’s “51st State” but still our close ally, as astronaut Jeremy Hansen from the Canadian Space Agency works in tandem with his three American crewmates — a reminder that, actually, we can all get along, if we try.

Those are just a couple ways that Artemis II feels more like a time capsule than a space capsule. Arguably the biggest is the spirit and pure joy of scientific discovery, breaking records and seeing new things. The America that flew past the moon Monday is the nation that beat polio and built the first computer, not an America that’s slashing research budgets and considers world-class universities “the enemy.”

We shouldn’t get too pollyannaish about space travel. In 1968, there was also a heated debate on why the United States was spending money on NASA that could improve healthcare or alleviate hunger, and — with Artemis II costing an estimated $5 billion, give or take — it’s still a fair question in 2026. Today’s space program is closely tied to private, power-mad billionaires as the notion of a “public good” steadily fades.

But let’s hold off on those arguments for a few days. Artemis II is a perfect excuse to see our world not as it looks from the warped perspective inside the Capital Beltway, but rather how the astronauts see it from 238,000 miles away, with no manmade borders, just a fragile ball where we can only survive if we depend upon each other.

Lovell, the legendary Apollo 8 commander, died last year at age 97. But before he passed away, he taped a wake-up greeting for the Artemis II crew for the morning of their lunar fly-by.

Lovell recalled that “we got humanity’s first up close look at the moon and got a view of the home planet that inspired and united people around the world. I’m proud to pass that torch on to you as you swing around the moon and lay the groundwork for missions to Mars, for the benefit of all. It’s a historic day, and I know how busy you’ll be, but don’t forget to enjoy the view.”

In a troubled 2026, let’s all stop and enjoy the view. On this darkest night, you can squint and still see hope for humanity.

Question: What’s your favorite R.E.M. song and how does it speak to the current political moment? — @lawliberg.bsky.social via Bluesky

Answer: Such a great and unexpected question, since I’ve been in love with R.E.M. since the first moment that “Radio Free Europe” bounded over the red-clay hills of Georgia and Alabama over to Birmingham, where I worked in 1982. It’s impossible for me to pick a favorite, but my favorite rarely played “deep cut” has to be also arguably their most political tune: “Ignoreland” from 1992’s Automatic for the People. The jumbled lyrics include: “TV tells a million lies/The paper’s terrified to report/Anything that isn’t handed on a presidential spoon/I’m just profoundly frustrated by all this.” Does that remind you of anything?

Last week’s question about the “No Kings” movement’s call for a May 1 general strike brought generally enthusiastic responses, although it’s worth noting that a goodly number of the emailers are retired or work in jobs that give them more freedom to protest than hourly-wage workers. Elementary school teacher Marie Taylor said she’s already been commanded not to participate. “It’s a big decision,” she wrote. “In the past, I have worked but not spent a penny. That is likely where I will fall on May 1.”

📮 This week’s question: Following up on today’s main column, I’d love to hear from you. Did you follow the flight of Artemis II, and did it bring you hope? Or was it just a hill of beans in today’s crazy world? Please email me your answer and put the exact phrase “Artemis II thoughts” in the subject line.

Before 2016 or so, political pundits rarely talked about “norms” — the practices that are embedded in a healthy democracy yet often not codified in law. It is a word with little meaning to Donald Trump, who honors many of these norms by ignoring them, such as the now-dead tradition that the president makes public his income tax returns. Other norms are minimally upheld, such as the practice of a full report on the president’s yearly physical exam. Trump has a long history — dating back to his Vietnam-era “bone spurs” — of finding doctors who only report what he wants to hear.

There is also a long history, unfortunately, of American presidents not telling the public the truth about their health. Woodrow Wilson spent the last year and a half of his presidency laid low by a stroke, with his wife acting as gatekeeper and making key decisions. Grover Cleveland boarded a yacht to undergo secret cancer surgery. More recently, there have been legitimate debates about the true cognitive health of aging presidents like Ronald Reagan and Joe Biden. In his first term, Trump took a secretive trip to Walter Reed Medical Center later said to be for a colonoscopy. Maybe that was true.

But there’s good reason in Trump’s second term for Americans to believe we’re not getting the complete medical picture about a nearly 80-year-old president who is increasingly prone to rambling public appearances and unhinged outbursts on social media. Beginning last Labor Day weekend, the president has had several four-day stretches where he has no public schedule, uncharacteristically stays in Washington for the weekend, and them emerges with one of his hands bruised or bandaged. His aides continue to insist there is nothing unusual about this.

“Deranged liberals cook up insane conspiracy theories when @POTUS goes 12 hours without speaking to the press,” a White House X account called Rapid Response 47 posted. “Fear not. President Trump literally never stops working.” On Monday, Trump returned for a White House Easter Egg Hunt with his right hand looking swollen and bruised. Again.

It might not be written in law, but I believe the public has a right to know a president’s true health. And lying to the American people is unconscionable. Both in the president’s public press conferences and working with sources behind the scenes, the White House press corps needs to aggressively press for real information about Trump’s medical condition. In a time of war and crisis for democracy at home, a presidential health cover-up is a Watergate-level scandal.

Remember Glenn Beck? Oh, I know, the radio talker whose Icarus-like rise and fall as an unhinged Fox News Channel host in the first two years of Barack Obama’s presidency defined the Tea Party era is still alive. He occasionally utters something insane enough to get some viral attention, but nothing like his influence in the dawn of the 2010s, when he was the main character in my book, The Backlash. When he was ousted from his Fox perch on 2011, I wrote that anyone doubting Beck’s influence should “ ask a fellow in South Carolina named Bob Inglis who was a Republican congressman until he told his constituents to “turn off Glenn Beck,” and lost a primary to an upstart who got 71 percent of the vote. Why do you think the Republicans in Washington remain in lock step, even as 90 percent of what they stay in lock step for is bat-guano crazy?“ Read the rest: ”It may take 27 years to undo the damage Beck caused in 27 months."

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