KESHA ROGERS:
New Meaning to Why People
Have To Live
The following remarks are taken from the March 23, 2016 LaRouche PAC New Paradigm Show:
Kesha Rogers: I think that we must look at where we are today from the standpoint of the degeneracy in the culture and the fact that the sense of optimism that was really the basis of what President John F. Kennedy set into motion has really been ripped from the population. The U.S. cultural collapse is the result of the continual attacks on real creativity and real science.
This has now been magnified by the collapse of the trans-Atlantic system.
I think that we can look at where we are today from a clinical standpoint, understanding the significance of the fact that today is the thirty-third anniversary of the Strategic Defense Initiative developed by Mr. LaRouche.
What that really represented was a continuation of the vision of President John F. Kennedy, because the intention of that policy was what Kennedy had set in place, which provided a mission for mankind to come together in the common interest of mankind. It wasn’t merely just to set foot on the Moon, to land a man on the Moon, and only that.
 President John Kennedy launched the Space Program to provide a purposeful mission for mankind. Obama’s decision to shut down the Space Program has contributed to denying a human identity to the population, leading to the present demoralization and degeneracy.
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Think about what President Kennedy had introduced: He understood that we had to actually create new frontiers of scientific development. He talked about producing satellites and nuclear power. A lot of people don’t even remember that this was the vision of Kennedy, that we had to actually go much further with our investigation into the Moon, and then to make these breakthroughs and new frontiers in scientific development that were going to actually change the paradigm and change the direction from what had been seen earlier with Truman: The collapse, and the attack on the FDR policy.
The same thing actually took place later with the policy of attack against Mr. LaRouche after he had gotten President Reagan to adopt the Strategic Defense Initiative. You look at this, clinically, from the standpoint of what we’re seeing today with the insanity of the Bush-Obama policies to continue to put nails in the coffin of the real economy of the nation, driving the entire nation into utter collapse, and to instead represent the imperial policy that goes against what our nation was founded on, the identity which was put forth with a sense that we had a mission to fulfill, which was our destiny, especially under President Kennedy.
One of the things I’ll just make note of right now is that you’re seeing just how much this has completely demoralized our society. You have a society that has actually committed itself to death, a culture of death that is killing people, a culture where people don’t see that they have a future, a future they can actually define. Why has this come along?
Well, it’s been since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and since the jailing of Mr. LaRouche, and the shutdown of the Apollo Mission, and the shutdown of what was to be the continuation of that, through the Strategic Defense Initiative, that this demoralization has developed.
Now you’re seeing the long-term effects of that. I just attended the 47th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. These conferences are held every year, so this shows you that the conference has been taking place, focusing on lunar and planetary exploration since the Apollo Mission. A lot of the people at the conference were crucial and key in the development of the Apollo Mission. There were also many young people there. It was heavily focused on the Moon, and what struck me about it, is that obviously, since the shut-down of the Constellation program by Obama and Obama’s attacks on the space program, on the policy of going back to the Moon, that that policy has been eliminated.
Now what kind of mission, or what kind of vision do these people have? You had a sense of real demoralization and hopelessness that had set in, or people were really angry about the fact that they worked all of their lives based on the conception that we had an obligation, the mission to return to the Moon. But it got deeper than that. I also think that people are recognizing that it’s our obligation to, as a scientific community, actually give people a sense of what it is that we are actually contributing to the further progress of humanity.
One of the things that came up, and we can discuss this more, is the fact that in 2008-2009, as a part of the rolling out of the Constellation program, prior to the Constellation being shut down by Obama, you had what was called the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) that was put in place to orbit the Moon, to actually show a direction, with the intention of possibly organizing getting back to the Moon,— but that was never realized. Today, the LRO is still sending back spectacular images of the Moon, but the mission for a planned manned return to the Moon was shut down by Obama.
 NASA/Chris Meany 2008
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was put into orbit around the Moon before the planned return of Man to the Moon was shut down by Obama.
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The key thing right now, is that what is missing in the discussion is a fight, not just over whether or not somebody thinks we should get back to the Moon. That’s not the fight.
The real fight is that there has been a loss in our identity in the United States that we are acting on a mission for all of mankind. We have lost a sense of a national-international mission. And that is what people at the conference understood and started to really pick up on, as I was making certain interventions into the discussions about what China is doing.
And China is not just going to investigate the far side of the Moon, and is not only organizing a Moon mission because it is just something to do. What they are doing is to actually identify a new direction, a new paradigm for mankind, and are saying that this is going to benefit the future existence of man’s identity and mission in space. And, obviously, everybody knows that the Moon is the first place for the launching pad for cislunar space,— the discoveries that are being made there, and will be made there, are going to benefit all of mankind.
We have to actually get a sense in the United States that the targeting of the space program by this President is completely unacceptable. He should have been, and must still be, removed, now! The reality is, we have to get people within the scientific community, as I’ve continued to state, to actually stand up and fight, because this is what is at stake.
The Mission for Mankind
Megan Beets: I had just re-read Krafft Ehricke’s essay, The Extraterrestrial Imperative, and right at the beginning, he says, “The way to solve problems is to forge concepts which permit one to look beyond the problems,” which I think is just a beautiful way of thinking about that, that you actually have to put your stake in something which is beyond the current system, which is ahead of the current system,— which is only something that mankind can do.
Rogers: It was interesting at this conference, that there is this urge and eagerness for this human identity, that people know that this is what they got involved in. It’s not just about people’s pet peeves, as though they are actually presenting high-school science experiments to show off or something. But, they know that what these scientific breakthroughs represent is a contribution to further advance and change all mankind.
This actually came up from one of the scientists at the conference, who was saying that NASA has a responsibility to work with other nations. It has a responsibility to recognize itself as not just a U.S. internal operation that’s making some scientific experiments on the side. Rather, what we do is going to benefit and affect the progress of all mankind. Also, scientific discoveries that are made by other nations are not just going to benefit those nations, but they are going to benefit the existence of our nation,— as in the example that one of the scientists used in remembrance of the Apollo Mission, that when Neil Armstrong stepped on the Moon, he said that it was “One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” But that giant leap, everybody knew, had to continue—that the breakthrough and the optimism that was achieved with that was not to end there, it was to move forward.
You think about the threat that we are faced with right now: The threat to the existence of mankind coming from a British imperial system; A collapsing trans-Atlantic system, A collapsing Wall Street system that has to be brought down. You think about how far away we have gone from President John F. Kennedy’s vision.
Instead, we see today the threat of war, as nations are being pitted against each other, instead of actually fighting to achieve the common aims of mankind. People should go back and really reflect and look at President John F. Kennedy’s first inaugural address, where he speaks on the threat that was posed against the powers of the United States and the Soviet Union, or Russia.
This question still stands today. People have to say, let’s put our differences aside, as John F. Kennedy did. We have a mission for mankind. He said:
Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science, instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce. And let both sides unite to heed in all corners of the Earth the command of Isaiah, to “undo the heavy burdens, and let the oppressed go free.
How do you do this? How do you free people? Well, you free people by giving them a sense of human identity, that we have a mission as human beings to discover mankind’s role in coming to know better who we are as human beings. The best way to do that is to go out into space. To go out and to come to know what is out there, what we can actually learn and discover—to actually explore the Universe. We have a mission in the Galaxy, and that mission is being stifled right now. It’s being stifled by war; it’s being stifled by economic collapse, and being stifled by Obama. So all those things that President Kennedy put forward, the way you are going to eradicate disease, and green the deserts, and so forth, is by going out and investigating the Galaxy.
Ben Deniston: Much of the general population gets a lot of propaganda about “China this, China that.” Anybody who’s serious, knows China is where things are going on. Education, science, development, investment in new technologies, the space program, infrastructure, nuclear power, rail, water development—you can go on and on and on. This space program is kind of typifying it. Kesha, you are saying that if we want a future, if we want to actually be human, these are our allies. They’re not attacking us. We have an insane person in the White House, following the orders of a dying Imperial system. That’s the problem. We have an ally there that we should be working with in China. And yes, space is the place to do it.
Rogers: I think this question that Mr. LaRouche continues to get back to,— as far as the commitment, and the understanding of mankind, and human beings, and Americans, that we have an obligation to be actually acting for the future—that is what has been taken away. Why do we make new discoveries? Why do we make new breakthroughs? We are not making the breakthroughs so that somebody can feel comfortable, or can say that something is happening that’s going to improve their immediate conditions and their immediate lives. Some people say, well, what is that going to do for me? How is that going to do something for me right now? This is backwards thinking in terms of economics. The method of LaRouche’s economics has been to actually drive an advancement for the progress that is going to actually impact future generations that haven’t even been born yet. Think about it from the standpoint of the destruction in society today, where people are reduced to thinking about the individual, “me.” What am I going to get out of this? How am I actually going to survive, myself? There is no conception, and no commitment to what is it that we’re actually doing to better and further the progress of future generations. You’ve lost that in society. So, now, you have a situation where you look at the conditions of the young people in society, they have come out of a generation, and they’re continuing to be told, “well, you’re just on your own. You are going to have to deal with this collapsing society, and this mess.”
We don’t have to deal with it in that way! This is the older generation to the younger generation. The key thing is that we have lost this identity of a commitment to those not yet born, to identify a future for them, as the grandparents used to state to the grandchildren— “I built this for you.” Or, those people who didn’t even get a chance to meet the next generations, who may have died beforehand, had a sense that they were leaving something that was going to, as I said, better the progress. So, that’s what we have to get back to. That’s the identity that has to be restored in a mission for mankind, that would be exemplified through the space program, as a key component of that.
Global Cooperation for the Future
Deniston: And we’ve got our insane President looking for asteroids to go jump onto. We’ve got this total joke of a program that’s part of the destruction of NASA, on this crazy wild goose chase, on this supposed asteroid mission, which is going nowhere. We need to get a shift, and this is where we want to go. This is the next target.
Rogers: It really requires that there is a change in the identity and the thinking of the American people. Take the scientific leadership: They have to be the start of that change. They have to overcome and be rid of this fear that says that they have to go along with these insane policies, when they know that it is an attack on real creativity, real science, and on a commitment to a driver that’s going to further the progress of mankind.
People are asking, how are we going to inspire the population? How are we going to bring a sense of optimism back? That was the subject of discussion that came up many times with some of the participants in this conference. They know that there is no sense that the role of the scientific community in the United States should inspire the population with an idea that they are participating in something great. So, they have a responsibility, and that is why we are actually fighting with these scientific leaders, to come together and recognize that we have to define a new direction for the space program, with what we could be doing if we were acting to collaborate with China, with Russia.
Yes, I know that there is an idiot policy in the Congress that says we can’t work with China. Well, kick the idiot Congress members out that say this. The scientific community has more power, and more clout, over the idiot Congress members who don’t know one single thing about science or about where the direction of mankind should be going.
That’s a further subject of discussion, but I think this question of the attack on the scientific community, the fear that has set in, and the fact that you have taken away the ability to really do what we are passionate as human beings about doing, about making discoveries, about being creative—people are just frustrated by the fact that they have to go through all the bureaucratic insanity, and that they have to go along with what is forced upon them.
But they shouldn’t accept that any longer. One thing I do want to say is that this is going to be the nature of the upcoming conference that is going to be held on April 7, and that we have to bring the best minds and thinkers within the scientific community, within the international community, together to say, let us map out a new course of direction for mankind, as we are seeing with China, with Russia leading the way right now. The United States has an obligation and responsibility to join in this effort, because if we don’t, it will soon be too late.
Either we are going to go down with a collapsing, dying, system, or we are actually going to join with that new direction, in the course that’s being set forth for mankind, one that is going to actually give new hope, new meaning, for peoples’ lives, and actually give people a sense of why they should want to live, and that they might have a purpose to live, and an obligation and a mission to live, because what they are living for is going to continue to bring a new sense of direction, a new sense of meaning for those who come after them. So I think we have a big job in front of us, and looking at some of what we have said here, in terms of the demoralization, the people who are taking their lives—this is the discussion that Mr. LaRouche brought up.
We have an obligation to bring a new meaning to why people have to live, and why people have to have a sense of life, from the standpoint that we as human beings represent something that no other animal could ever achieve, or could ever do. So that should give us hope and happiness.
