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 whose version performed by Frank Sinatra in 1964 was always associated with the lunar missions of the Apollo program.
Krall performed a very heartfelt, slow and reduced version of Fly Me to the Moon on piano during the funeral of astronaut Neil Armstrong at the Washington DC Cathedral on September 13, 2012. The act of scattering the ashes of the first man to set foot on the Luna from the deck of the USS Philippine Sea CG-58, in the Atlantic, was equally emotional and closed in a certain way that chapter opened by President John F. Kennedy on September 12, 1962 at Rice University, in Houston, when he said “We choose to go to the Moon.”
Vietnam, Richard Nixon and Watergate and support for the fiercest Latin American dictatorships led 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 a certain boost to America, but his inaction in Guantánamo and the management of the intervention in Afghanistan overshadowed his presidency, also undermined by the economic crisis that began in 2008. before his arrival in the Oval Office, and which he would occupy between January 2009 and January 2017.
Obama's dream unexpectedly raised the specter of racism and hatred in the US, which would lead to the appearance of Donald Trump, the president who encouraged the 2021 coup d'état and who remains obsessed with eroding the increasingly weak democracy. American.
Following a recent sentence, which 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 far-right group Proud Boys, is when the debate in the US about its moral authority and the place that American democracy occupies in the world has been fully reopened.
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 evident lack of moral authority or guidance from our political leaders.
When one types in Google "US moral authority overseas" a cascade of articles appears that delves into the topic of this loss of authority of the United States. There is therefore a recognition of this loss of authority and, what is hopeless, there is the conviction that it will be difficult to recover it.
For the US, it is a priority to find its own balance and strengthen its democracy. On its agenda, despite being important, the moral authority that it can enjoy to the south, the north or both sides of the oceans, has unfortunately ceased to be a priority.
Trump, despite his judicialization, remains a threat. He speaks of an “invasion” of emigrants and reaffirms that the current administration wants to reestablish 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 United States abroad will take time to be restored. First, the US will have to neutralize the authoritarian and dangerous Trump, and then, if he succeeds, rebalance and recover democracy from him. And from what we are seeing, this is going to be a difficult feat, even returning to the Moon.
