The Wide Webb Telescope

Since the dawn of history, humans have looked up into the night sky and wondered: What is out there? And how did we get here?

...that is, many humans wondered that. A select, elite few, however, asked instead: how do I become absurdly rich?

The study of why such people exist is the subject of humanity's latest venture into the the deepest recesses of inner space. The Wide Webb Telescope is the culmination of many decades of research and engineering as well as lessons learned from previous failed attempts to communicate with these distant, alien, and apparently hostile beings.

With this unique tool, we will for the first time be able to glimpse inside the coldest, darkest, and most intellectually isolated place in the universe: The heart of a Republican.

Figure 1: Guiana

The telescope will be launched from Guiana -- in part to take advantage of Guiana's location on the equator, thus reducing the amount of fuel needed to reach escape velocity -- but mainly to prevent sabotage, as most Republicans do not know where Guiana is.

Once it escapes Earth's gravity, and no longer needs to engage its political maneuvering thrusters, it will seek a safe and isolated location where it can remain while doing the minimum of work, and turn its back on humanity -- accurately and precisely mirroring the behavior of right-wing politicians, causing them to accept it as one of their own. Its fine coating of gold, mere microns thick, is designed to precisely emulate the aesthetic of certain extremely popular right-wing con-artists, allowing it to project an image of wealth without destroying its ability to be useful to society, and allowing it to blend seamlessly into the toxic background radiation found in the most primordial areas of the political spectrum.

The most intensely difficult technical challenge involved in the engineering of this amazing telescope has been this: how to prevent data contamination from the extremely high levels of propaganda which radiate from all right-wing politicians? In order to meet this challenge, NASA had to develop amazingly sophisticated multi-layer brainwash-resistive shielding to harmlessly absorb and radiate away disinformation before it could reach the delicate and highly accurate sensors of the telescope itself.

The Webb's unique optical and acoustic sensors will then allow humans to perceive, and hopefully one day understand, signals which have never before been properly studied, including the poorly-understood phenomenon of "dogwhistles", the well-known but almost undetectable "quiet part out loud", and the nearly invisible influence of primeval belief-systems which have been carried forward by right-wing patriarchs since before the Dark Ages and yet still remain shrouded in mystery.

Should the telescope survive the difficult ascent to orbit, the Van Allen radiation belt and both houses of Congress and reach its target without being compromised away into a pair of reading spectacles, we may yet discover truths which are even more terrifying and difficult to comprehend than right-wing behavior already appears to be... and we will undoubtedly find ourselves with new questions to ask, as we stare up into the night sky.

...such as "why would anyone want to be like that", "what the hell is wrong with these people", and of course "WTF".