“It’s lonely out in space”: The desperate astronaut and the unreality of official American

...

Like a number of other media commentators, the Times editors seem surprised to learn that “astronauts are human, subject to the same marital strains and mental aberrations that afflict more ordinary mortals.” This is not news, the Nowak case has simply exploded a debilitating myth and a great deal of pretense.

The editorial proceeds piously, “The space agency may need to revise its procedures for screening the psychological health of astronauts—particularly those who might embark on long space trips. The agency is taking precisely the right action in beginning reviews of its screening procedures, from the time of application into the retirement years.”

One can only wish NASA good luck, in screening out any possibility of extreme human emotion and personal collapse.

As the Times piece demonstrates, when the authorized image of reality is shattered, the American media and powers that be are thrown into confusion. So many aspects of US public life are carefully stage-managed and calculated, from election campaigns and major party conventions to film premieres and entertainment award programs, to ensure that no hint of life’s more troubling aspects will appear.

The brittleness and fragility of the existing social and political relations in the US is such that not only can the latter not tolerate the slightest direct questioning (hence the exclusion from the mainstream of all political views, even the most timid, that oppose the establishment-sanctioned ones), all signs of the contradictoriness and complexity of the human condition are generally banned. Somehow or other a recognition of the messiness of human affairs, some sign of life as it is actually lived by broad layers of the population, might give people ideas!

...

http://wsws.org/articles/2007/feb2007/astr-f12.shtml