The article seems pretty aware of the value of success, at an extremely difficult national prestige project, when the the nation was feeling divided and troubled.
It doesn't seem aware of how weakly or strongly felt the support or opposition (to the moon landings) was. That's critical in a real-world democracy. If (say) 90% of the voters would prefer not to have X, but the other 10% strongly favor X - then you'll get X. Politicians and parties know how to assemble a set of positions that >50% of the voters will, overall, favor.
https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=pessimistsarchive.org
The article seems pretty aware of the value of success, at an extremely difficult national prestige project, when the the nation was feeling divided and troubled.
It doesn't seem aware of how weakly or strongly felt the support or opposition (to the moon landings) was. That's critical in a real-world democracy. If (say) 90% of the voters would prefer not to have X, but the other 10% strongly favor X - then you'll get X. Politicians and parties know how to assemble a set of positions that >50% of the voters will, overall, favor.