Regardless of whether you think NASA is a Masonic front agency that shields any number of black budget deep state projects, there can be little doubt that it serves as a very potent propaganda arm for at least three key pillars of progressive piety: environmentalism, scientism and social justice. Arriving a mere two years after the comparably themed and equally hamfisted agitprop known as Hidden Figures, Mercury 13 is a documentary chronicling the abortive attempt at a program aimed at preparing women for space flight. Though it is an interesting nugget of hidden history, it’s hard to imagine the information presented without the filmmakers leaning on so much communist, progressive and feminist preaching. What is revealed through interviews and archival footage is fascinating, but there are deeper questions behind the surface details that go unexamined. And in the case of John Glenn, a distinctly different and far less charitable picture is painted than the gender egalitarian we were given in Hidden Figures.

The documentary lays its cards on the table right out of the gate. It opens with a female voice intoning the feminist homily as we watch a female body float in the zero-g simulation tank. We’re given some very standard and tiresome twaddle about how fear is what motivates men to preserve their stature in society. If only the patriarchy wouldn’t be so fearful, we’d already have women on the moon, dammit! Mind numbingly stupid stuff. It’s also hard to avoid the water symbolism. Besides the water’s numerous associations with the moon and various goddesses, it also foreshadows the quasi-baptismal initiation rites to which these women were subjected.

The documentary offers up a mixture of archival news footage and interviews with the surviving members of the original Mercury 13 program. The backstories of the various women are compelling, but the Mercury 13 program was never officially part of NASA and received funding from the husband of world renowned aviator, Jacqueline Cochran. Jackie Cochran’s husband was industrialist and RKO media mogul, Floyd Bostwick Odlum. The interview footage pours on layers of sentimentality over the fact that these women were eminently qualified, but were ultimately denied by the horrible, sexist good old boys at NASA. More feminist pablum. It’s totally predictable, but the deeper story appears to be Odlum and his very Bruce Wayne-esque investment trust, Atlas. Funding the Mercury 13 was undoubtedly chump change for a high roller like Odlum, but one wonders what someone with so many industrial, utility, and media interests is up to by funding a group of women for space flight. Given his proximity to the Wall Street/Bolshevik funding network, his interest in the Mercury 13 project seems to make more sense. Nowadays, tech moguls like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are getting into the private space race in earnest. Even if it was a small investment, it’s hard to imagine someone as shrewd in business as Odlum throwing money at something without some larger payoff in mind.

The other unexplored story is the prime mover of the Mercury 13, William Randolph Lovelace II and his Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute. Lovelace’s daughter, Jackie, is a featured interview subject and dispenses some crucial backstory plus all the requisite feminist talking points. His involvement in the development of Project Oxcart is perhaps the real story beneath the surface. Oxcart was a code name given to the high speed surveillance aircraft program. Not only does the Oxcart project mostly explain the entire Project Blue Book disinformation campaign, but it also explains the mythology behind Area 51 since it has been revealed as a staging area for testing.

And then there’s Lovelace’s rather mysterious death. A small private plane crash is a story that’s occurred on more than a couple occasions involving people who were close to the military/intelligence complex. It seems more innocent than the numerous dark clouds which hover over Frank Olson’s mysterious death as we discover in Erroll Morris’ excellent Wormwood documentary. Given his involvement in such secretive military programs, the nature of his demise begs a few questions.

Where Hidden Figures plied the racial angle of identity politics, Mercury 13 is very explicitly a piece of feminist and communist propaganda. It appears most blatantly through the story of aviator, mother and militant political activist, Jane Hart. Wife of Senator Philip Hart and mother of eight children, Jane became deeply disillusioned with what she perceived as an unjust prejudice against the women of the Mercury 13 program. Subsequently, in the words of her own children, she became “more radicalized” and joined the National Organization for Women. While NOW may not have the distinction of being founded by a known CIA asset, it receives funding from known globalist organizations such as the Open Society Foundation and the Rockefeller Family Fund. But the major blow to the future of women in the space program comes from an unexpected source: the congressional testimony of Jacqueline Cochran. A crestfallen Jackie Lovelace reads her testimony as though feminist Jesus instantly became Judas. Disingenuously claiming that “feminism means you advocate for women”, Lovelace restrains her incredulity as she reads from the congressional record. Cochran insisted that allowing women into the space program would have a negative effect on birth rates. Ooh. The truth hurts. Naturally, Lovelace and the other subjects attribute her motivations to self-interest by not-so-subtly insinuating that the patriarchal pressures of NASA were too great to withstand. Right. That’s the explanation for every disparity and misfortune that befalls women. I look forward to the documentary which chronicles all of the women being shut out of sanitation, mining, construction, and armed combat.

Naturally, the subjects heap piles of praise over the USSR’s decision to send Valentina Tereshkova into space while venting their exasperation over America’s patriarchal backwardness. It’s the perennial rhetorical grift of feminism coupled with a tacit endorsement of communism. All disparities in outcome can be chalked up to sexism and discrimination, and if we just got #WOKE to communism, we might EVOLVE. Read some Catharine MacKinnon, bigots.

Lastly, there’s the question of esoteric symbolism and numerology embedded in the program. From an alchemical standpoint, Mercury is symbolized by a serpent. Exoterically speaking, the serpent symbolizes the deceiver who brought about fall of man. From an adept esoteric point of view, the serpent is the symbol of the divine spark of gnosis. From a numerology perspective, both 7 and 13 have significance in the hermetic and esoteric tradition. Why did they make these decisions?

The documentary brings us up to the present by offering the testimony of Eileen Collins who gushes about the inspiration she drew from the original Mercury 13. Naturally, we’re dutifully reminded that it was feminist extraordinaire, Bill Clinton, who named her the first female to command a space shuttle. Man, the Clintons are #WOKE. Juanita who?

On this morning, 40 years ago, my life changed forever. On 4-25-78, I was brutally raped by Ark AG, Bill Clinton. I have spent the majority of my life trying to forget….. and watching the Evil thrive. A timeline of that day follows…….: — Juanita Broaddrick (@atensnut) April 25, 2018

History matters and there’s a lot to learn from history, but ideology shapes the filter through which history is perceived. Mercury 13 is an interesting piece of history, but it’s too cluttered by its editorializing. The final sequence actually uses CGI to paste in the image of a female astronaut over John Glenn’s image. They cut to the footage of the Apollo astronauts on the moon and overdub female voices in place of the voices of the original astronauts. It’s so seamlessly done, it’s very easy to imagine someone thinking that this was real footage. Or maybe reinforce the belief held by some that the moon landing was faked. Like Hidden Figures, it blurs the line between fact and fiction. You can have propaganda or historical integrity. Not both. Which film stretched the truth more in order to advance its ideological goals? Hard to say despite one being a “documentary”. Is the distinction between documentary and historical drama being blurred on purpose for the express purpose of dumbing down the population? I think yes. The line between the synthetic and real is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish in the digital age and Mercury 13 is hastening this collapse. Perhaps this was the goal from the start. Maybe the Mercury 13 project was doomed from the outset, but was intended to be unearthed from the historical record and utilized as a propaganda tool for this moment in history. Call me a cynic, but given how carefully the architects of globalism tend to their designs, I wouldn’t rule it out.