On Top of Everything Else, a NASA Satellite Might Crash on You

NASA issued a warning Tuesday: a 600-pound manmade satellite that is no longer in use, that is, a hunk of metal about as big as a vending machine, is going to fall out of the sky on Wednesday evening and could kill someone. Believe it or not, there’s a valuable lesson in that.

The UK’s Daily Mail reported that this big hunk of space junk “will reenter the Earth’s atmosphere at 9:30 pm ET, with most of it burning up in the sky. But some components will survive the descent and NASA warns ‘the risk of harm coming to anyone is… one in 2,467.’” Not only that but “experts are not sure yet where the debris will fall.” So there isn’t even any place you can go where you can be sure that you won’t be mashed into an accordion by a falling satellite.

That means it isn’t worth worrying about since worrying won’t change the outcome anyway, but it also means that there is a very real possibility that someone on Earth will be killed by this thing. It’s a peculiarly modern fear: space junk, like so many other things, could kill us.

The great caricature artist Dave Washburn once drew a two-panel cartoon in which a happy-go-lucky fellow is ambling down a city street and saying, “I sure hope an anvil don’t fall on me today.” In the second panel, he is crushed under a massive safe that fell from a building and is saying, “I meant to say a safe.” It’s always been one of my favorite cartoons, as it pretty much sums up my philosophy of life: if one thing doesn’t get you, something else will, so there’s no point in worrying.

The point is this: although we don’t generally like to think about it and often pretend that it isn’t so, life is finite. As Bill Clinton’s Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders sagely noted, “Everybody’s probably gonna die from something.” I hate to contradict the sage former chief doctor, but actually, there is no “probably” about it. If COVID-19 doesn’t get you, or the COVID vaccine, or the bugs Old Joe Biden wants you to eat, or a train derailment, or the Russians, you could be crushed by a vending machine that falls from space. The lesson here is not to be morbid or fearful, but courageous.

The real pandemic is cowardice. These are once again times that try people’s souls, and yet all too many Americans have internalized the idea that standing up against the Leftist machine is not worth the professional harm that could ensue. Yet the Left’s comprehensive political, social, and cultural offensive calls on us all to be activists, after the manner of the parents who stood against drag queens and Critical Race Theory in primary schools and got smeared as “domestic terrorists” by the FBI for their efforts. Even just a few years ago, it would have been inconceivable for the feds to crack down so hard on peaceful political dissent. But the times have changed, and we have to change with them.

The rush of events has led us to a point where every American needs to have courage and be willing to take risks. Cowering in fear and acquiescing to evil won’t make you live forever. Something will get you anyway, so it’s better to stand for what’s right even if it’s difficult to do so. Courage, in the final analysis, is not the absence of fear, which is an emotion that can come upon us without our having consciously called it forth, but the refusal to let our fear guide our actions.

Of course, I don’t mean doing anything violent or criminal, but I do mean understanding that the foes of freedom are powerful and determined and that if we don’t defeat them now, our children will suffer for it. If we don’t even fight them out of a love for comfort, inertia, indifference, or cowardice, our children will reproach us for our unwillingness to stand up for the possibility that they would be able to live in a free society.

Chief among our obligations is to be informed. The Biden regime is avid to limit what it calls “disinformation,” which means facts it doesn’t want us to know. That makes it all the more urgent for patriots to seek out the truth and spread it wherever possible, and above all, to act upon it, without cowering in fear of the apparent invincibility of the Leftist machine, of NASA satellites crashing over our heads, or of anything else.

That’s what we do here at PJ Media: we bring you the facts and analysis that the Leftist elites expend so much effort making sure you don’t see. You can get all of our fearless reporting of the truth through our PJ Media VIP membership. When you become a member, it helps us keep telling the truth, and it gives you a great deal as well: exclusive articles, podcasts, an ad-free experience, a spring in your step, iron in your heart, and a mind filled with facts that have formed within you an unshakeable resolve to stand for freedom.

Use discount code SAVEAMERICA for 40% off a VIP membership. Don’t delay! The satellite will fall, and the fight for freedom will go on!