My Sputnik Moment

Oh.

My.

God.

I'm sitting here in stunned silence wondering whether to just crawl up in a corner, assume a fetal position and sob... should I call a neurosurgeon??? You see, something awful happened: I agreed with Sarah Palin.

Mooselini's been catching flak again for talking like a giant 'tard in public as is her wont. Everyone's mocking her 'Sputnik' comment and filing it away under "dumb sh*t Sarah Palin Says". But I can't help agreeing with her because she's ri... she's righ... she's... f*ck it, not wrong.

Asked for her "thoughts" on Obama's State of The Union speech and the idea of the Sputnik moment, Palin said:

"When (the president) so often repeated the Sputnik Moment that he would aspire Americans to celebrate. He needs to remember that what happened back then with the former communist USSR and their victory in that race to space, yeah, they won, but they also incurred so much debt at the time that it led to the inevitable collapse of the Soviet Union."

Now I'm not defending this ignorant sh*t's instinctual opposition to America embracing some new grand plan that would reclaim our spot as the world's leading innovator... that's a different story. But there are many people attacking her just for claiming that it was the space race that made the USSR go broke like it's a dumb thing to say. Really? Read some history... Clearly, it ain't just conservatives who need to read up.

From Sputnik to the space shuttle, billions of Cold war dollars were blown on winning domination in space - just so one system could claim superiority over the other. Like when the Soviets launched Sputnik, it was branded by Khrushchev as a "triumph for Communism". Same when Yuri Gagarin became the first guy in orbit. Yeh, take that America! Capitalism sucks!

But America had plenty of cash to throw down on the game. We weren't sending guys up in rusty rockets held together with duct tape... we weren't diverting money away from feeding our people so we could splash out on fancy new space gizmos... we weren't literally running our national economy into the ground to win political points. The Soviets, being so eager to show the superiority of Communism, did.

So, there you go. I agreed with Sarah Palin. Now excuse me while I shoot myself.