Donald Trump’s call for a “Space Force” as fourth branch of the military is a distraction. That is all it is, a bit of handwaving to seize your attention from the criminality taking place elsewhere. To discuss it at all is to fall for the trick.
And yet, and yet, I will, long enough to note the following. It will seem like digression but I will drag it back to relevancy by the end.
I have always treasured the three minutes of every mainline James Bond movie (except for LIVE AND LET DIE and CASINO ROYALE, and that should show you what a goddamned nerd I am), that feature his interactions with the weapons master known as Q. (Or his successor, R.)
Q, classically played by Desmond Llewelyn, who doesn’t appear to have ever been young, was this persnickety guy who spent his life working on gadgets, like fountain pens that fired acid, Astin-Martins with bulletproof shields, and, oh, I don’t know, socks that if snuck into some malefactor’s drawer would electrocute him if he tried to wear them. Q was great. Q was goddamned serious about his job, and though he only rarely took any further part in the action, he was honestly irritated by 007, who took every visit as an excuse to needle him.
Those scenes were often an exercise in showing us gadgets too silly for even the current silly adventure, like the coil of levitating rope designed to blow up and kill the fakir climbing it, and about all you can say of that is, well, I suppose the need for that device must have come up at least once.
I always resented James Bond, a little bit, for not giving the guy his due. I mean, sometimes the ribbing did cross the line into abuse, and it always struck me that this fellow was also giving his all for Queen and Country, producing this nonsense that helped James Bond stay alive while defeating various super-villains. Would it have killed James Bond to just tell the guy, “You know what? Those garotte cuff-links you provided me with last time really did come in handy. At the very least I owe you a nice bottle of sherry?”
And this brings us back to space force.
Donald Trump has proposed a space force because it sounds cool. He has proposed a space force even though our actual space program is moribund and even though he has nothing but contempt for science or indeed for knowledge of any kind. He wants the dashing stuff, the uniformed stuff, the zip around in outer space stuff, but he doesn’t actually want to fund the technology that would make it possible.
He wants Captain Kirk but has no place for Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott, let alone Science Officer Mr. Spock. Never mind that Kirk would be dead without those two luminaries, and a crew of highly trained professionals providing the knowledge that makes Kirk’s derring-do possible.
He wants James Bond but he doesn’t want Q.
But you can’t have James Bond without Q. James Bond without Q is a frat boy dead in the first reel.
And James Bond might not always show that, but he sure as hell knows it.
Alas, Trump is not of the same level of intelligence.
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