For the first time since the Cold War, Americans are contemplating the threat of nuclear war. This, like so much fear these days, results from Donald Trump’s intemperate tweets.
Fallout
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
18 Comments. Leave new
«This, like so much fear these days, results from Donald Trump’s intemperate tweets.» Amazing that the same fear wasn’t inspired by Ms Clinton’s more long-winded examples of less well-considered statements or, for that matter, those of dear Mr Obama. Perhaps what Mr Trump has discovered is that messages limited to 140 glyphs are the best means of communicating complex thoughts to people in the US – and no doubt, elsewhere as well….
Henri
To communicate well one must know one’s audience.
And that, Mr. Trump does well.
Hey, anybody else remember ‘Duck and Cover’ ? Drills where we trooped to the fallout shelter on cue? Studying radiation poisoning in health class? Oh, those were the days.
I’ve playing Fallout recently anyway – getting back in shape, so to speak.
“Hey, anybody else remember ‘Duck and Cover’ ?”
*
I remember: “Get under your desk. Put your head between your knees and cover your head with your hands.”
It might as well have been: “Put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye.”
Besides, who the hell would want to live in a post-nuclear catastrophe? I’d rather take a direct hit at ground zero.
🙁
Fallout makes it seem romantic.
«I remember: “Get under your desk. Put your head between your knees and cover your head with your hands.”» Mein verehrter Lehrer, you and your classmates were being «empowered» (to use a term that didn’t become current until much later – the point was to inculcate in you that if you did what Teacher said – and behind her, the Principal and the government, all the way up to the President himself, you were going to make it ! No «learned helplessness» – not even in the face of the Bomb, for US youngsters in the immediate post-WW II period !…
«Besides, who the hell would want to live in a post-nuclear catastrophe? I’d rather take a direct hit at ground zero.» Agreed (and here Alex Wellerstein’s handy tool for checking out what would happen were a bomb to fall just where one lives). But then, you and I are old geezers, who’ve seen enough to imagine what a post-nuclear existence would be like ; when we were «protecting ourselves» under our school desks, we lacked that perspective….
Henri
The nuclear threat has been a constant presence in my consciousness since my youthful employment on a nuclear weapon delivery system and the laying of my hand on a nuclear weapon, while on an alert pad, to see if I could feel the heat of subcritical masses in close proximity.
Then I would walk out into a beautiful sunny day in Orland, Florida among people who had no clue how close they were to a weapon such as that, and the total religious-like faith that the presence of that weapon made everyone safe, never considering that they would be targeted first in a pre-emptive or retaliatory strike.
I imagined the race between the sensation of pain and the heat of fission traveling from my hand to my brain, imagining how my brain would be vaporized before the sensation of pain lost its race to my brain, resulting in a painless death at close range, knowing that those closest would be most fortunate.
Homo incendiarius will fall victim to its own lethal mutation by conventional fire or nuclear fire unless it first loses the race to some outside interloper such as an asteroid. The most lethal of parasites kill their hosts before they can reproduce and so die before spreading to other populations.
The entrance of humans to the Americas, maybe 12,000 years ago, resulted in mass extinctions of large land mammals such as horses and camels, among others. The Indians came to believe the buffalo to be sacred and essential to their existence, and that in killing the last of the large land mammals they would ultimately be killing themselves.
The first buffalo-worshiping humans in North America were fortunate in that their weapons of mass extinction operated comparatively slowly and could be stopped, whereas we modern science-worshiping humans will have only minutes to live and no way of stepping back from a disaster that can’t be seen, but only imagined, until it is upon us.
Yep, the good news is that disintegration doesn’t hurt for long.
The Doomsday Clock is currently at three minutes to midnight, and due to be set again in January.
Apropos Homo incendiarius, Glenn, Robert Parry’s article Escalating the Risky Fight with Russia is well worth a read. Nota bene : dear Mr Obama seems to be doing this all on his own, without any need for «intemperate tweets» on the part of Mr Trump….
Henri
The complaints against Bush, and Trump as well, by fans of Obama are more of style than substance.
Obama’s redesign of nuclear weapons to vary output may not send shivers to the many, but to those who understand, he is making the unthinkable thinkable without making the world safer from those whose lethal mutation is strong.
«Obama’s redesign of nuclear weapons to vary output may not send shivers to the many, but to those who understand, he is making the unthinkable thinkable without making the world safer from those whose lethal mutation is strong.» Mr Obama seems determined to find still other ways of worsening relations between the United States and Russia prior to Mr Trump’s inauguration, as this development indicates….
Fun and games !…
Henri
Hey, Glenn – I like the parasite metaphor, and under that assumption we would be unsuccessful parasites. The most successful ones live long, healthy, lives without bothering their host too much, and eventually become symbionts.
I think cancer might be another good choice. We are, after all, cells of Gaea’s body. Some of us are growing too fast and threatening the entire body. Drastic measures are sometimes necessary in life-or-death situations.
I say this knowing all too well that I inhabit one of the diseased organs.
War has always been fought for only one reason: to get something.
That breaks down to a few subclasses:
1. To get what your god needs.
2. To get resources (be that land, material, slaves). Oddly enough, a lot of case 1 causes case 2.
3. To get security from a threat.
The only other subclass — and I can’t find any examples of it — is when a, literally, insane leader starts a war for no reason. Imagine Obama waking up tomorrow and deciding the attack Canada. Why? Voices in his head (which is also a subset of case 1).
Anyway, take the Israel/Middle East case. Say Saudi Arabia nuked Israel. About two minutes after Tel Aviv gets hit, Israel’s forces (in subs and aircraft) will drop A-bombs on Mecca and Riyadh.
Nuclear wars don’t happen because the people in charge AND their handlers are in it for the money. They want nice things. They want power. They want to be in charge. If there was a full-out atomic exchange, the entire planet’s standard of living would plummet. Not a little. A lot. Crops would fail. Starvation would happen. Martial law. Look at how people are when they can’t get cellphone signals for five minutes. You think they’re going to tolerate standing in line for survival rations? Smokers, you think you’re going to be able to get a pack of Marlboros? Go feel a piece of two-ply toilet paper because that’s going to be gone for a very long time. So is hot water, showers, clean dishes, etc.
No leader wants an atomic war. Not because of any high-falutin’ moral reason. No leader wants it because it means the end of the good times for him. It means no more trips to the bank for his corporate masters. Trump isn’t a threat, I think. At least not for starting an atomic war.
And if I’m wrong, well, I’ll be among the first to find out. The hard way. As I’m in a major population center.
In the first two debates, St Hillary promised a ‘no fly zone’ like the one in Libya that would force regime change on Syria beginning her first day in office. In the third debate, she said the ‘no fly zone’ would be preceded by an ultimatum to Putin. If he complied, stepped down, and his successor gave Syria to al-Nusrah and the Crimea to the Ukraine, we’d have peace. If Putin did not comply, the resulting War would be entirely his fault.
Why was Hillary sure the US would win? Why wasn’t she worried that a nuclear-armed state was being provoked to the extreme? She planned a pre-emptive EMP strike, which would completely disable all Russian retaliatory capacity, and even if Russia managed to launch a few thermonuclear weapons, the US ABM would keep the US safe.
Many agreed with her advisers, who promised this would work. Trump said St Hillary was stupid: before starting a nuclear war, the US first needs to double its nuclear arsenal.
The Brits had a reasonable choice. They blew it.
After the nominating conventions, US voters had a choice of frying pan or fire.
Meanwhile, Obama is shipping a large number of MANPAD anti-aircraft weapons to al-Nusrah and the Daesh, so even if Trump refuses to replace the evil Syrian regime, Syria will still have a ‘no fly zone’, and Trump won’t be able to undo it. Putin is NOT pleased with Obama. If Putin cannot support Syria, Saudi and Qatar and Turkey are reasonably certain they can overrun Syria. Then they’ll fight over the spoils. And Putin said Syria was a strategic resource for Russia and he would never let it go.
So we’ll have Interesting Times in ’17.
Could be wrong but hasn’t Turkey since changed its position? Recognizing the fact that the “rebels” are losing, and therefore, mending ties with Russia?
«Recognizing the fact that the “rebels” are losing, and therefore, mending ties with Russia?» From what I read, it would seem that after the recent coup attempt, Sultan Erdoğan realised that he wasn’t quite as «indispensable» as he had thought to his US «ally» and started looking around for other support. Besides, while he would have liked to see a Sunni regime installed in Damascus, he did understand that Daesh et al had wider objectives, which impinged on the the Turkish state and his own ambitions, and that while it would be nice to get rid of Mr Assad («democracy» at work !) the most important thing was to prevent the Kurds from establishing a powerful base on the other side of the border with Syria. All this seems, not surprisingly, to have resulted in a realignment of Turkish policy. We shall have to see what the consequences will be on the ground in Syria, but one thing seems certain, the US state Department is not amused….
Henri
This cartoon is not on gocomics (or the newspapers that get their feed from gocomics), they’re still running Mr Rall’s cartoon from the 27th.
«This cartoon is not on gocomics (or the newspapers that get their feed from gocomics), they’re still running Mr Rall’s cartoon from the 27th.» Interesting, Michael ! Is that still the case now, nearly a day later ?…
Henri