This isn’t a podcast, or a podcast video. It is a video (above) that I made of the Blue Origin footage intercut with reactions by TikTok users. You might like it. Watch above. Text below is a SHORT TAKE. I could have put the two together but news moves fast. I did what I could.
________
Today, six women decided to “take up space” by training for a couple of days, doing lots of publicity, squeezing into fancy spacesuits, and then taking a Blue Origin rocket into space for a few minutes before returning to Earth.
In the dreamscape of Woketopia, they made history as the first all-female flight crew ever to reach outer space. In actual reality, if you’re lucky, you are engaged to a guy with enough money and his own rocket to gift you with that experience.
To actually make history, you’d need real astronauts who worked all of their lives for that moment. Not those who grace Elle's cover as though something really important is happening here.
It was a joy ride—a luxury few can afford. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t know if I’d have the courage to try, so perhaps just that alone is worthy of praise.
It seemed to me like a wedding present—a thing the guy who has everything gives to the girl who is about to have everything. And in that way, it blows the lid off every other kind of gift. No diamond ring or yacht can top it.
Listening to all of them spout their new-age gobbledegook made me sad. How much more empowerment does a woman like Katy Perry need? She took that ride knowing her young daughter would be watching her, knowing something could go wrong, and her daughter would see her blow up into a million tiny pieces.
And she did it anyway.
We can all breathe a sigh of relief that tragedy didn’t ensue and that they landed safely. Still, I can’t help but see this as somehow symbolic of a world-changing. Bezos wasn’t rescuing stranded astronauts. He wasn’t trying to get us to Mars. He was simply making his bride feel like she mattered.
What feels so over to me, so obviously over, is the way the upper crust or the ruling elites have used virtue signaling to justify everything they do. You want to fly up in a rocket with some of your girlfriends because it’s fun? Do that. Don’t hide behind some phony intersectional female empowerment lie. This wasn’t that.
These billionaire tech bros have so much money and power they don’t know what to do with it. It’s good they didn’t choose tomorrow, April 15th, to launch that rocket. That might have tempted fate, as it was the day the Titanic sank 113 years ago.
Some said the sinking of the Titanic marked the end of the Gilded Age. Perhaps this vanity rocket could be one of the signs that our Gilded Age is nearing its end.
In the 1800s, the wealthy had so much money that they didn’t know what to do with it. They ended up building massive mansions on the Gold Coast.
But speaking of the Titanic, that was right around the time of William Randolph Hearst, who built Hearst Castle and became the subject of Orson Wells’ masterpiece, Citizen Kane. In it, Kane manufactures great success for his mistress, Susan Alexander, by pretending she’s a great opera star.
Jeff Bezos is inching toward this uncomfortable truth in his efforts to make Lauren Sanchez more important than she is.
In this famous montage, we see the toll it has taken on Susan and Kane:
If you’re lucky enough to be that rich, maybe you can buy happiness, especially if your definition of happiness is denying reality.
There is a harsh lesson in Citizen Kane, one I’ve never forgotten. It doesn’t matter how big your house is or whether you flew into space. You can’t buy love. And you can’t live forever. We’re all still only human—ashes to ashes and all of that.
Share this post