Trump's Space Force members channel Worst Chris when deciding what they'll be called
Aux Features Space Force
First came the United Stats Space Force logo that looks totally nothing like the Star Trek insignia, and now comes a completely original name for its members. And, look, we get it: naming things is hard. Who on earth thought of naming a spoon a spoon? But did the Space Force team (not to be confused with Steve Carell and co. over at Apple TV+) really think they were going to get points for calling themselves Guardians?
“Today, after a yearlong process that produced hundreds of submissions and research involving space professionals and members of the general public, we can finally share with you the name by which we will be known: Guardians,” the official Space Force account released on Twitter late Friday afternoon. And, according to the image accompanying the tweet, the Guardians title even comes with a cheesy bank commercial slogan, to boot: “a name chosen for space professionals, by space professionals.”
Just who are these space professionals? And are we to believe they have never heard of Marvel or the Guardians Of The Galaxy films? “The opportunity to name a force is a momentous responsibility. Guardians is a name with a long history in space operations, tracing back to the original command motto of Air Force Space Command in 1983, ‘Guardians of the High Frontier,’” reads a follow-up tweet. “The name Guardians connects our proud heritage and culture to the important mission we execute 24/7, protecting the people and interest of the U.S. and its allies.”
The tweet thread is concluded with the Space Force’s apparent twist on the U.S. Marines’ motto—semper fi—which is short for semper fidelis, a Latin phrase that means “always faithful” or “always loyal”. The Guardians will apparently be using “semper supra” which translates to “always above,” “always beyond”, or “always earlier.” It also appears that the term Guardians will be capitalized like Marines.
Trump first announced he had asked the Pentagon to establish this sixth military branch back in June 2018. And while there may one day be the need to police the moon, our current feelings about the whole thing are summed up pretty well by Twitter user William Buecker:
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Never believe in the concept of grownups. Pop culture mimicry has been largely documented in sociology, be it among mafia thugs mimicking gangster movies, or cops mimicking action heroes, in behavior, language, body attitude, etc. They’re children offered a career in play pretend. They’re conforming to an idea of how that identity should be embodied, how their professional paradigm looks like, and that idea is vastly imported from the mythological corpus of pop culture. They copy movies much more than movies depict them.They’re kids reenacting -and seeing themselves as- their own big screen heroes.And the most juvenile government has illustrated it many times, with political campaigns and discourses promoting themselves in terms of pop culture, action and sci-fi characters. It’s not a hobby, it’s a grammar, it’s a thoughts-structuring representation, it’s the lego pieces of the construction of the self. Star Wars, Dirty Harry, Marvel, DC. They’re the terms in which to see the world, and the values to achieve. The closer you get to these applauded heroes, the more successful your life has been, the higher your self-esteem. Wow, you’re just like [insert figure of power].Everyone does it to some degree, as mythical role-models shape our consciousness from the Bible to the Red Riding Hood. Dream On was a TV series based on it, and Resnais’ magnificent Mon Oncle d’Amérique touched on that too. But the more you mature, the more life feels different from cartoon universes, the more subtle it gets. And the less relevant and the more embarrassing direct references would become. But when youwhen theyah fuck ithttps://politics.theonion.com/supreme-court-rules-death-penalty-is-totally-badass-1819594803
Wrong on one count: Dream On was a show made so adolescents could catch some boob on late-night TV in the halycon days before high-speed internet. It was literally about nothing else.
That was definitely one of the main purposes, but it also had some great comic actors and some decent writing (the end of the show is pretty good too, if memory serves).
I remember watching that and thinking, ‘so divorced fathers with shared custody of their kids get laid this much?… who knew?’
The only other thing I ever say Brian Benben in (what a name, though!) was an advertisement for some Monday night sitcom. He had to manhandle some kind of robot or something for a reason that was nonsexual, but in such a way that it could be seen like he was trying to have sex with it if someone were to walk in at that very moment. I’ll leave you with the suspense of what happened next. Suffice it to say: Hilarious!
lol when I was like 12 there was this one neighbor kid who was obsessed with that show. He was, of course, a pervert.
Check out the military life for some play acting on a grand scale. I remember the first day of my army training , how disappointed I was that the Drill instructors were all hacks. They were screaming quotes from “Full Metal Jacket” and “An Officer and a Gentleman” . “You’re from London? Only 2 things from London , steers and queers and I don’t see no horns.” Same thing happened in actual war zones , but it was “Platoon” quotes then.
We have airmen and seamen and so we should also have spacemen and on this I shall not budge.
I’ve got several questions.Why aren’t members of the Coast Guard called Guardians? Or are they called Coasters? And what is Space Force Guarding us from? Aliens? Okay, then, is there something you’re not telling us? If it’s not Aliens then it’s either Russia or China. Do they already have their own space armies? If not, isn’t the US’s creation of a Space Force kind of a challenge? It’s like if I created a new sport and I was the only one who played it and then I declared myself world champion. Eventually some jerk is gonna size me up and say, “THAT guy thinks he’s world champion?” And then all of a sudden I’ve got competition. So thanks for the inevitable Space War, Trump administration. Also, anyone who uses the word heritage earns my immediate suspicion and gets put in social quarantine.
Who will protect us from the vacuum of space if not the Guardians of Space Force?
Myke Cole’s latest, Sixteenth Watch, apparently already has more or less merged the Space Force into the Coast Guard. As it would vastly boost the latter’s budget, there are probably some people already thinking about whether or not this might be a good idea to suggest in reality.
If anything, we should call them “Hoovers.”
I nominate the members of the Coast Guard to be hereafter referred to as “Costa Ricans.”
The combination of “heritage” with “culture” and “guardians,” capped with with the “always above” phrase? I mean…I’m not a paranoid type but this all sounds more than a little bit like space force is supposed to protect someone from lesser beings of some sort who someone thinks might damage their heritage or culture in some way.
Exactly what kind of heritage does an organization that has existed for only 2 years even have?
Putting all those terms together that they used is giving me some creepy racial purity eugenics vibes.
Yeah. My first thought was that they pulled that from the Klan. I’m surprised they’re not calling themselves “Knights.”
Higher ups will be Spaceforce Cyclops and Spaceforce Grand Wizards.
They’re called Coasties, although some administrative units will include the phrase ‘Guardians’ in their motto (like ‘Guardians of the Great Lakes.’)Unless they’re at the Academy, in which case the phrase used by most enlisted behind their back is ‘Cadidiots.’
So thanks for the inevitable Space War, Trump administration. That $750B annual “defense” budget ain’t gonna spend itself!
Rural American here. “Heritage” is one of those words that lets you know you’re likely to see a confederate flag or hear the n word (or likely both) very soon
I wonder how many billions of dollars and how many bureaucratic man hours (that seems like it should be an outdated term – “person hours” seems unwieldy. Surely there’s a better option) were spent creating this whole new branch of the military which does a job that had been done for nearly 40 years without any major issues by the Air Force.
“Work hours” seems reasonable.
Given that Trump was behind it I’m going to estimate twice to thrice more than it cost was spent.
I honestly think “man” as a synonym for “human” has very little to do with the patriarchy. I get that I’m on the losing side of this argument, though it does bug me when people say “workman’s comp” rather than “worker’s comp” and such. Maybe it’s because “mankind” or the gender neutral “man” seem more inclusive than othering to my ear.
I feel similarly. But, “Peace on earth and goodwill toward men” does not and I actually said out loud, “But not women!” when I heard it on TV the other day. I know it means all people, but pluralized, it doesn’t sound like it. And I can’t explain why “man” sounds fine but “men” does not.
Yeah, I totally agree, and it’s weird. I don’t want to defend outdated customs or anything, but it just never struck me as offensive to hear “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” etc. The lack of the indefinite article in front of “man” seems notable now that I think about it. There’s a poetic quality to it that wouldn’t be there if the first “man” meant solely Neil Armstrong unequivocally, although it leaves open that interpretation to good effect.
Fun fact: He actually was planning to say “a man” as in, that was a small step for him, but it was a giant leap for all of us. He just forgot the “a” before “man.” (And Kubrick didn’t want to reshoot it. Haha!)
They are renaming bases and searching for a Command HQ. The conventional wisdom seems to be that President Biden will stay the course on Space Force because the wheels are already turning and service branch is an inevitability.Also the reorganization, renaming and relocating all will serve as a military-related, Pentagon-financed economic stimulus which does not require going to war or a new expensive weapon systems in the near term. The only reason to oppose it appears to that it may have started a couple of years early and Trump seemed to get-off on the idea.The stunt may have come from Trump’s gut, but Biden will govern with his head.
My hope is Biden looks at this and pivots the funding and infrastructure and basically demilitarize it and hand it over to NASAI mean seriously who thought a Space armed force was needed for a country who’s space program now involves paying Elon Musk to take our people space?
There’s far more to the space program than Space X.
Could we at least nuke the moon first?
“Since the beginning of time, man has yearned to destroy the sun . . . ”
We gotta strike those Mooninites first!
I don’t know how much militarization there is or will be to the Space Force, other than rank and chain of command. Whenever one is needed, they’ll send a chopper out from Cape Canaveral to look for someone lost at sea and of course the pilots have to keep-up with their hours flying around, but Patrick and Cape Canaveral are pretty singularly focused on managing and protecting their launch pads (basically, everything not numbered 39 on this map).
Has there ever been a stupider time in history than what we’re living now?Not just Space Force Guardians, or Operation Warp Speed, which would be terrible even if they were the result of a third grade naming contest… but just in general, why is the world so stupid in an age of so much information? Just too much stupid information?
Was warp speed a thing before star trek, or could CBS or whomever actually sue for IP infringement?
I actually think they have a legit case to sue over the Space Force logo.
The early ‘00s are pretty close, maybe worse, as wholesale slaughter and plundering in the Middle East was entwined with trying to get us all hepped up on jingoistic outrage by renaming French Fries to Freedom Fries.
9/11 doesn’t have shit on Covid-19. It has killed millons of people. Plus we have had to deal with a even worst president then Bush.
Bush was god awful and Dick Cheney is a monster. The current administration is all that, but doing everything in insultingly stupid obvious ways. Then hitting us over the head with the fact that they’re not even trying to lie about it and no one is stopping them.
It is much worse now. It’s not even close. 9/11 was a historic tragedy that changed the course of the nation, but it was at least recognized as the tragedy that it was. In its wake, we even found some bipartisan spirit and a sense that we were one people united in the common goal to survive, heal, and punish those responsible. Things went off the rails with the Iraq war of course, and that early sense of patriotism was exploited to commit some heinous moral crimes and literal war crimes. But believe it our not — and I say this as someone who hated Bush, marched against Bush, and hope the screams of Iraqi children keep him from ever getting a wink of sleep for the rest of his life — in the immediate wake of 9/11, Bush stood up in front of the nation and said, essentially, that we are one people, that Muslims did not do this, Arabs did not do this, some very specific sick and bad people did this and we need to come together to hunt them down and to rebuild. Covid 19 has brought out the very worst from Day 1. Most of the tragedy has been self-inflected and instead of 9/11 feels much closer to Bush and FEMA’s botched reaction to Hurricane Katrina, only even worse than that and on a much larger scale. Trump has actively tried to make the virus worse in the hopes that it would kill as many black and brown and coastal/urban voters as possible. We’re losing roughly a 9/11 worth of people every day. And so much of it is stemming from the politicization of basic safety precautions like mask wearing and social distancing – something people are either too selfish to do or so fucking antagonistic they are actively doing the opposite and sending death threats against government and public health officials who are trying to implement those precautions. There will be no way for historians to explain this period in American history that makes sense and doesn’t make a large chunk of the country sound like insane assholes.
in the immediate wake of 9/11, Bush stood up in front of the nation and said, essentially, that we are one people, that Muslims did not do this, Arabs did not do this, some very specific sick and bad people did this and we need to come together to hunt them down and to rebuild.Something obviously went very wrong after this given the Muslim vote for Republicans from from 42-70% (depending on who you ask) in the 2000 presidential election to 10% or less from 2004 and every one ever since as far as I know. It’s almost as if words didn’t translate into action and if anything, the reverse happened.Also, the majority of Arabs in the US are some denomination of Christian, not that it should matter but not enough people seem to be aware of that.
I think the difference is that if that happened today, Freedom Fries would DEFINITELY have caught on more and really been an actual thing.
I see what you mean. I guess I’m not sure which is worse – loud, noisy lurching toward fascism, or more stealthily controlled gliding toward fascism. 2002-2005 were very dark times and if not for various screw-ups W and Rove and the GOP made in 2005 I sometimes wonder what would have been.
What a bunch of a-holes.
What a hive of scum and villainy.
Peter Serafinowicz for the win!
Two possibilities: 1. They have never heard of Guardians Of The Galaxy and are in for a rude awakening.2. They totally got the name from Guardians Of The Galaxy and came up with some bullshit to justify the name.
Probably not a coincidence this came out the same day as the revelation about Kushner’s illegal shell company. Trump consistently finds ways to divert news cycles by releasing inane bullshit to distract the media and they fall for it damn near every time even after four fucking years.
I feel like this one doesn’t work as a distraction because no one cares.
People care enough to have written an article about it which you cared enough to click on and even cared enough to comment on…
Yeah because it’s fun to make fun of, it doesn’t distract myself and plenty of others from Trump’s shell company scam. This is also AVC not Politico or The Hill or Wapo or whatever none of which are leaning into this stupid story. AV Club isn’t where I go to read about politics.
Inverted Pontiac emblem, fade to black.
According to the other members of the armed forces their unofficial name will be ‘p_cker heads’.
You can use profanity here.Fuck, pecker isn’t even profane.
Now I know who was always mysteriously killing me in Halo 3.
That William Buecker tweet is right. It should be flushed down the toilet on the first day. Sadly, this is gov’t we’re talking about here so its probably here to stay in some form or fashion
There’s a lot of inertia that’s accumulated over the last couple years.If Biden chooses to axe the program, they need to spend time doing the legalese behind the drawdown (how do you deal with the personnel and equipment, what would be duplicate/inessential in the new arrangement and where that goes, does the budget go to the new agencies and at what percentage, blah blah blah). There’s also always the chance they run with the “Space Force” but with a new “mission” (and hopefully name) – who knows what it would be, but it’s still a chance.
There is nothing space force does that wasn’t already being done. The functions, equipment and personal return to the Air Force, NRO and any other agency involved.
Just roll them back into the USAF Space Command, which is where a vast majority of them came from anyway.
Yeah and if we need to appease the stupid people tell them “USAF” stands for “United States AS FUCK!”.
It’s still going to take a period of various agencies and department heads fighting for the surplussed resources and budget etc.I’ve served. It’s amazing what winds up hanging around simply because they have it and refuse to do anything with it until directly ordered to do it. One of my duties involved replacing a vacuum tube in a delicate piece of equipment – in the ‘00s. Please note this was not for EMP or any other concerns, there was equipment IN THE ROOM that was newer and more reliable but never installed, we just had one ancient piece of tech that because someone somewhere at some point declared it vital we weren’t allowed to replace it.
It’s still going to take a period of various agencies and department heads fighting for the surplussed resources and budget etc.Yeah, but that happens every year anyway there was equipment IN THE ROOM that was newer and more reliable but never installedThis happens in any operational environment for a couple reasons:1. People responsible for providing a critical service have learned how to keep the ancient equipment operational. They don’t want to learn how to do that again on something new. This is not unique to the military.2. Commanding officers (or project managers) come and go routinely. They sometimes have a pet project they want to see completed, but by the time it is completed, they have moved on to a new position, and the new CO (or PM) doesn’t know what the project was for or doesn’t think it’s necessary. So it sits there collecting dust.
Pretty much. This is why so much of gov’t is broken. They just refuse to flat out say “we’re getting rid of this”. It doesn’t matter who is in office either. It’s damn near impossible to clean out gov’t bloat.
A naming project based on submitted ideas, many of which no doubt arrived via the internet, and it’s not name Spacy McSpaceFace? I don’t know whether I’m relieved or disappointed.
AV Club doing its part to ram the “Worst Chris” joke into the ground I see. The Space Force shit is ridiculous, but not as ridiculous as the “shaping the strategic environment” tweet from last summer.
It that tweet actually real? I truly thought that was a joke.
Hey, who among us hasn’t sat at a parent or grandparent’s knee as they regaled us with tales of shaping the strategic environment?
To be fair he is a part of Hillsong which fucking sucks.
Oh, I don’t even like Chris Pratt; I’m just annoyed with AV Club’s continued attempts to make Fetch happen with the Worst Chris schtick.
This term seems to just exist now for him. I’ve seen it used many places. Feel free to chide their choice to use it and all.
If Pratt had anything at all to do with the content of the article, I’d say yeah sure. Use “worst Chris.” But he’s not even mentioned in the article. Like…at all.
Hillsong certainly sucks but given that it’s success has been built on its ability to manipulate its followers I don’t know that it’s fair to say that each one of those followers also suck.
Nah they still suck. Support a homophobic scammy church you kinda suck sorry. They can better though.
The “worst Chris” stuff feels like a lazy cash-in at this point, considering Chris Pratt is just one actor in Guardians of the Galaxy, and not even the part of the films that most people tend to associate it with (that’s Groot).
This actually makes me like Pratt a little more and the AV Club a little less.
“doing its part to ram the […] joke into the ground I see”- The AV Club
Weirdly enough, the Space Force will have a real job: monitoring and protecting satellite security. It’s something that was already being done in some fashion by existing branches of the military, and the optics of the “Space Force” branding are really silly, but it is an actually legitimate defense task.
You’re telling me that it was something we were already doing and then a lazy bumblefuck came around and—in an effort to distract from one of his many, many, scandals–slapped some glitter and sequins on it and pretended he accomplished something? Preposterous.
You’ve just described the History of the World.
It’s a legit mission, but creating a separate branch (rather than letting USAF do it) must add a shit-ton more bureaucracy.
I’m assuming most of the personnel came from the Air Force. So, now all those people have to get new uniforms and new insignia and move offices (do they have separate Space Force bases yet?) all just to do the same job they’ve been doing. Is there a separate Space Force basic training? What’s it like? Where is it? Do the people who moved over from the Air Force have to go to it or just do a shortened training for anything new? Are they going to build new bases for them?They’re probably just going to sponge off the Air Force, aren’t they? Use their BMT and bases. Will they even have their own uniforms?
I think, for now, you could look at it like the Marine Corps’ relationship to the Navy. I believe both are under the Navy Secretary, their officers attend the same academy or are part of the same ROTC, but they do have separate bases and enlisted personnel go to separate boot camps. If Space Force is a full-on separate branch, I would think their brass will eventually demand separate bases, separate basic training programs, etc.
It may be because I just finished binging all three seasons of Leah Remini’s Scientology show, but a lot of the Space Force’s slogans sound like they came from L. Ron Hubbard.
Sony took an injuction stopping the use of ‘Starship Troopers’.
I’m kind of surprised they didn’t just go with ‘Redskins’.
Wait do you think Space Force is on Apple TV+? I know y’all had some confusion with HBO and Showtime in the not-so-past, but tell me you know Space Force is on Netflix and not on Apple’s weird ass channel no one subscribes to.
Yeah, considering the article linked mentions Netflix in the lead , its a bit weird. Was the Moonbase show on apple?
That was Showtime.Poor Showtime, truly a network in the midst of an identity crisis.
Hasn’t it always been the Pepsi to HBO’s Coke, the Burger King to its McDonalds?
He must be confusing it with that show about the alternate history where the Soviets beat us to the moon.
Instead of saluting, they should just go for the full body cringe they inspire.
I take it as an implicit concession of the election. They are clearly at the “working your notice but taking the piss” stage.
The tweet thread is concluded with the Space Force’s apparent twist on the U.S. Marines’ motto—semper fi—which is short for semper fidelis, a Latin phrase that means “always faithful” or “always loyal”. And also rips off the Coast Guard’s version, Semper Paratus, “always ready,” which has a fairly catchy tune associated with it that’s played at Coast Guard ceremonies and interservice events where nobody else generally knows the lyrics.Which also made me just realize there’s going to be some sort of song created for “Semper Supra.”
Nope. They will be called Dr. Leo Spacemans.
Red Shirts?
Jebediah Kermans.
Tribbles
Shoulda called it “U.S. Spacy” so that we can usher in the Macross timeline.
I really hope that next from the Space Force are some laser swords. Then, maybe they’ll have blue pajamas with a red cape (and red exterior underwear).
If it took a year to come up with guardians, it’s clear that they will never get off the Earth.
Look, I hate Chris Pratt. And this hook is a huge fucking leap.
I got the movie tagline all ready:In space, no one can hear a wet fart.
It’s getting to the point where even making fun of the stupid shit that the Trump administration is doing is getting tiresome. While he’s still technically in the office, he is still newsworthy enough to demand coverage, but once he’s out, can we just stop paying attention?I know there’s very little chance he’ll just fade away into obscurity after he’s out of the White House, but I just hope the media can exercise enough restraint to keep coverage to a minimum. If he, his followers, his family, or his cronies do something too big to ignore, then…fine, cover it, but then…just move on, no thinkpieces or pundits or hot takes or op-eds or memes or whatever. I am tired of Trump hogging all the mental bandwidth, clogging the attention economy with every dumb thing he says or does. I know this is a big ask, but can we just let his 15 minutes of fame expire?
Also, is there any real need for that comma in ‘A NAME CHOSEN BY SPACE PROFESSIONALS, FOR SPACE PROFESSIONALS’?
That “Worst Chris” joke is getting old and was never funny to begin with. Pratt deserved every bit of the criticism that Page sent his way but then again, Page is a mature adult talking like a grown up would. Making fun of Pratt because his colleagues are more popular is childish and doesn’t make the A.V. Club look good, especially when it’s placed in an article that has nothing to do with Pratt.
The snipes at Chris Pratt are getting old. It’s so childish.
I can only hope that the Space Force’s motto becomes “May the Force be with you” because if it doesn’t, someone dropped the ball.
The show you have linked to is a Netflix show, not Apple TV+. Indeed, your own headline in the article you linked to mentions Netflix.As an aside, I kind of liked it.
I’m still not convinced Space Force isn’t some elaborate joke.
Guardians of HERITAGE and CULTURE.Hrmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, got enough dog whistle in there?
Green Lantern’s Guardians of the (whole frikin’) Universe feel slighted, Patrick.
Honestly, the logo is far closer to Pontiac than to Star Trek. It’s basically the same.
Reminds me of how the Tesla logo resembles an IUD. Maybe they should’a consulted someone outside of their closed inner circle for input.
I like the way they picked a motto, name and insignia that could IN NO WAY be mistaken for those of a white supremacist group.
Prats?
I think Space Ranger would be a better option. Or maybe Star Trooper.
Any legitimate job this Space Force (ugh) has to do (like security of satellites that have strategic value) has been performed by the USAF for decades, right? In this situation (as in so many others), Trump is basically George Costanza, having spent the week moving the Penske file into the big accordion folder.