What a golden-egged goose Donald Trump has been to late night. In many ways, he is King Midas, imploring Dionysus for the golden touch, only to learn to be careful what you ask for.
And he has asked for a lot — to the delight of the comically-inclined left. A magic wall. Witch-hunt recognition. Media that fawns upon the mighty.
And last month, Space Force. Trump has been so excited in the sloganeering potential that he seems to get plumper and oranger each time he whips his base into rally froths, like a Jamba Juice on crack. Forget a purpose, let alone a reasoning or development plan; it’s chant-friendly. “Space Force!” is easy to remember and isn’t trademark-infringing (not to mention the fewer letters for your hats, on sale today!).
Comedians had their expected field day with the idea. And who could blame them? Trump’s tweets alone have turned a literal profit for comics: Comedy Central has the 15th most popular book on Amazon with its The Donald J. Trump Presidential Twitter Library hardbound collection of Trump’s furious, grammar-challenged missives.
Space Force is just as tantalizing. As a viral video points out, Trump speaks of a sixth branch of the military like he’s auditioning for Shatner Shakespeare in the park.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dj_gEfbysI
It’s a silly idea, yes. It will surely feature all the efficiency of Trump healthcare and all the malice of Trump tax cuts. Is it a stretch to picture him wanting to turn the moon into an investment venture?
Regardless, we should enact Space Force before he gets distracted by something else shiny.
The reason? Any state-mandated scientific research should be welcomed by the left as a rarity on the level of a gay Supreme Court nominee.
Don’t believe it? Look no further than Mike Pence, who has become the ironic poster boy for Space Force. Regardless of your politics, this is indisputable: The second most-powerful man in the free world does not believe in evolution, nor that the Earth is a day older than the Bible deigns. You could nearly see the discomfort in his face as he played dutiful wingman and praised Space Force, a higher power that wasn’t evangelicalism. 
Pence has good reason to be concerned. Science, like life and spam, finds a way. If the GOP opens the Pandora’s Box of scientific research, it will find itself facing some seriously conflicted questions.
The administration has shown its hostility toward science and education in its treatment of global warming, the gutting of the EPA and the paltry funding of groups from NASA to the Center for Disease Control. And now Trump is offering to marry military spending with science research?
The left should recognize the errant gift its been dealt. It’s one thing to wage war over a book. It’s another to get into space with it. Even at its bureaucratic worst, a cosmology-based government branch would pose something truly terrifying to the right: empirical science. What Republican wants to be the politician who officially tells Christian conservatives that the Earth is billions of years old, not thousands?
All aboard the U.S.S. Midas!
