The first episode of the third season of the celebrated Apple TV series The Morning Show ends with the song Fly Me to the Moon, performed by Canadian singer and pianist Diana Krall. It is not the first time that Krall sings this song written by Bart Howard in 1954 and the version performed by Frank Sinatra, from 1964, was always associated with the lunar missions of the Apollo program.
Krall performed a soulful, slowed-down version of Fly Me to the Moon on the piano during the funeral of astronaut Neil Armstrong at Washington DC Cathedral on September 13, 2012. The act of throwing the ashes of the first man who stepped on the moon from the deck of the USS Philippine Sea CG-58, in the Atlantic, was equally emotional and in a way closed that chapter opened by President John F. Kennedy on September 12, 1962 in Rice University, in Houston, when he said “we choose to go to the moon”.
Vietnam, Richard Nixon and Watergate and support for the most vicious Latin American dictatorships drove the US into a dark tunnel and determined, in many ways, the loss of its moral authority. It was Yes We Can, Barack Obama’s political philosophy, that gave America a certain boost, but his inaction in Guantánamo and the management of the intervention in Afghanistan darkened his presidency, also undermined by the economic crisis that started in 2008, before his arrival in the Oval Office, and that he would occupy between January 2009 and January 2017.
Obama’s dream unexpectedly awakened the specter of racism and hatred in the US, which would lead to the emergence of Donald Trump, the president who encouraged the coup d’état of 2021 and who remains obsessed with eroding the fall ever weaker American democracy.
Following a recent sentence, the one that carries the highest penalty, 22 years in prison, against one of the ringleaders of the assault on Congress on that infamous January 6, 2021, the Cuban-American Enrique Tarrio, leader of the group of extreme right Proud Boys, is when the debate has been fully reopened in the US about its moral authority and the place American democracy occupies in the world.
What is moral authority? We would agree that it is the quality or characteristic of being respected for having good character or knowledge, especially as a source or guide, thanks to having exemplary and appropriate conduct. If we transfer that definition to our environment, we will see that we also suffer from an obvious lack of moral authority or guidance, on the part of our political leaders.
When one types in Google “US moral authority overseas” a cascade of articles appears that deepens the subject of this loss of US authority. There is therefore a proper recognition of the loss of authority and, what is hopeless, there is the conviction that it will be difficult to recover it.
Finding its own balance and strengthening its democracy is a priority for the US. In his agenda, despite being important, the moral authority that can be enjoyed in the south, in the north or on both sides of the oceans, has unfortunately ceased to be a priority.
Trump, despite his prosecution, remains a threat. He speaks of an “invasion” of emigrants and reaffirms that the current administration wants to restore a situation of covid-type “hysteria”. A recent CNN poll indicates that 61% of Americans certainly believe that Joe Biden won the election legally, but 38% still maintain that he did not.
With these data, and with Trump circulating politically in the media, the moral authority of the US abroad will take time to restore. First, the US will have to neutralize the authoritarian and dangerous Trump, and then, if they succeed, rebalance and recover their democracy. And from what is being seen, this will be a difficult feat, even returning to the Moon.
