April arrived in Colorado this year displaying the Janus-like dual visages that characterize MAGA America. The ecstatic, giddy enthusiasm of the Artemis crew which just circled the moon before returning to a near perfect splashdown off San Diego reminded each of us why we are so proud of our country — its daring, its commitment to engineering excellence, its ability to hire, train and then execute a mission requiring a team in the thousands, and finally, our willingness to push the boundaries of scientific inquiry.

This American success returned to Earth in a capsule named Integrity. It was the lone female astronaut, Christina Koch, who responded to a press query about the use of the word “crew” who remarked on her recognition, as she marveled at a small blue marble floating silently in the infinite expanse of space, that we are all crew for our shared planet. Her sense of our common humanity and entwined responsibility is the America admired across the globe by friends and even a few foes for more than a century.

Despite several imperialist skirmishes at the close of the Gilded Age, it was Americans who rushed to restore order and secure victory for others in both the First and Second World Wars. The sacrifice of lives and treasure was never begrudged. Rather than whine for reparations, we helped both allies and adversaries place damaged economies back on their feet. We promoted prosperity and democracy for all nations.

This generosity won us partners and friendships that, combined with free global trade, delivered riches into every corner of the world — unevenly at first, but inexorably more equitably over time. We assisted far more often than we interfered, distributing vaccines, medicines, miracle seeds and agricultural know-how without charge. We were the open-armed and welcoming nation we wished to be and which served as the source of our “soft power” in many capitals. It’s the nation a majority of Americans wanted their country to be — a country that should restore funding to scientific research and our national labs, deferring any further cuts to NASA’s budget.

During the recovery of the Integrity, Mae Jemison, the extraordinary first black female astronaut, now emeritus, provided commentary. At 70, with a pixie hairdo that made her appear half her age, she praised the importance of the crew’s diversity — a black pilot, a female scientist, a Canadian technician and a male systems specialist.  She never spoke the dreaded DEI word but still sent a message to every little boy or girl hearing her that the heavens also belonged to them. After graduating from Stanford in chemical engineering, she attended Medical School at Cornell. Born in Decatur, Alabama, Jemison moved to Chicago with her parents, an elementary school teacher and a maintenance supervisor. Selected as one of 15 from 2,000 applicants for Astronaut Group 12, hers is an American story that confirms determination and striving will take you places you never thought you would go — perhaps into orbit around the Earth. Astronauts, like professional athletes, are selected solely on the basis of their merit.

Sadly, the face MAGA displays to both Americans and the bewildered citizens in countries throughout the world is that of a crazed, angry and vicious president who demeans their leaders as well as any immigrants. His hostility is echoed by a cadre of toadies who think nothing of attacking longstanding allies for their insufficient fealty to the Tangerine Emperor they worship. I may be a fallen-away Catholic, but I ‘ve never doubted the Pope is a man of immense moral authority. It beggars belief the Pentagon brass would order his Vatican ambassador to a meeting and then suggest America could easily snatch the Pope from his bed and toss him into a Brooklyn jail cell next to Nicholas Maduro. Though a few months spent speaking Spanish with the American pope might provide salutary counsel if he ever returns to Venezuela, a billion-plus Catholics are outraged at the mere suggestion.

I don’t necessarily believe the election of Cardinal Prevost as Bishop of Rome is a result of divine intervention. The Catholic Church has certainly elevated dubious popes in the past. It seems more likely Pope Francis, who served in the College of Cardinals as a fellow South American prelate with this American Augustinian, might have nudged his appointees to consider the priest from Chicago, who assumed pastoral duties in Peru, as an able successor to Peter’s throne. His recent observation, “Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God… dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth,” may make him the right Pope at the right time.

Once anointed as the Vicar of Christ on Earth, I have no doubt he spoke honestly when he said, “I have no fear of the Trump administration.” I also suspect his Swiss Guards at Vatican City will not prove the pushovers who surrounded Maduro. As the former evangelical preacher, John Pavlovitz, wrote on his “The Beautiful Mess” blog, “As you watch the Right… rending their garments at Pope Leo XIV, remember they don’t hate the messenger half as much as the hate the one who sent him.” My money’s on the historical Jesus of Nazareth.

When our founding fathers established a separation of church and state in the American Constitution, it’s important to recall 500 years of religious wars had spilled over into the 18th century. These men were just 50 years distant from European slaughters of millions of men, women and children in the name of God. What started with the Crusades, at least one of which was blessed by Pope Innocent III and was not an effort to free the Holy Lands but to exterminate Albigensian heretics in rural France. Martin Luther’s Reformation launched further intra-Christian pogroms across Europe.

Suddenly, Pete Hegseth and his boss are speaking of their Persian “excursion” as a holy war. They have clearly failed to read the text of President John Adams treaty with the Barbary Pirates, where the most devout of our founding fathers declared 200 years ago the United States were not founded as a Christian nation, nor an enemy of Islam. Several administration acolytes are attempting to identify Trump’s miliary operation as a precursor to the battle of Armageddon. This is total “end times” lunacy. Where are the military parents willing to sacrifice the lives of their sons and daughters to launch the rapture?

When the ayatollahs in Teheran asked citizens to serve as human shields atop the bridges and within the power plants Trump was threatening to decimate, video shows tens of thousands responded. The White House dismissed this by claiming they were paid to show up. How much would you have to be paid to march with your children to a near certain martyrdom? Showing up was fanaticism — very tough to defeat with bombs. Worse yet, our allies are rapidly deserting America. On the floor of Parliament this week, Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats, labelled our president “…a dangerous and corrupt gangster.” In the world’s most fractious parliamentary assembly, not a single member rose to defend us. Davey went on to demand the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, convene a summit with Britain’s NATO and Gulf allies to resounding huzzahs throughout the chamber! In Ottawa, Prime Minister Mark Carney secured a majority in his parliament by promoting an election platform predicated on severing Canada’s ties to the United States.

When former friends conclude we are the problem, we have a problem. The only crusade I am willing to join was called for by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932 when he promised to recover our country from the grip of millionaires we call billionaire oligarchs today, and to return it to “…the American people.” This was the promise of his New Deal. MAGA looters lie whenever their lips move. The face I wish America to show the world are the crew aboard Integrity. Restoring the lifesaving medical aid programs serving our planet’s most destitute would-be money well spent.

Miller Hudson is a public affairs consultant and a former Colorado legislator.