Billmon:
Once you switch, you never go back.
Back to Main
April 19, 2006
WB: Sanity is Optional
Comments
Look at me! I have bombs!
I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s and knew that the Trident sub base a few hundred miles south in Washington State was a target.
At fifteen I had a backpack in my closet with a few essentials including muesli, now known as granola. At the bright flash on the southern horizon I was headed north to put at least one mountain between me and the radiation.
Perhaps the fruits of too many 1950 sci-fi novels, and what about my family. Anyway, that was the subtext of my youth, that it could actually happen.
My repatriated Canada is now complicit in the World Police ™. I am now measuring my need for truth against the dearth of news reports of this ongoing gamesmanship. Do I want the next generation spared of the fear of destruction, if it is only a fear. Or must I take it seriously, in which case I may also take no action.
I’m reminded of my favorite writer, Martin Amis, when he collected some essays as Einstein’s Monsters. They discuss his horrified fascination with the nuclear, discussed in relation to his infant sons.
This is serious shit the whole nuclear thing.
Energy, one thing. Bombs are another. They have nothing to do with each other except the power source.
It has been said that the safest outcome is that each nation has the bomb, so no one dares to try.
I’m okay with that except that we won’t know that it works until two cities are wiped off the map, with casualties.
Posted by: jonku | Apr 19 2006 5:47 utc | 1
Wasn’t KBR commissioned to build detention facilities for these guys?
Posted by: jj | Apr 19 2006 5:53 utc | 2
@jj
Don’t know if it was the KBR branch or not, but according to a financial disclosure I found and posted before (no time to look for it now), Halliburton certainly was.
Anyway, I’m glad that Billmon found the second exchange (between Klein and George Stephanopoulis). It’s about time someone actually used the term “insane” (or “fucking nuts”, I’m not picky) in the framework of a national debate. Once you insert the meme that just because they are authority figures they are not, necessarily, any less wacky, people might start pricking up their ears. I always thought George was too middle-of-the-road/conservative to call a spade a spade that way, but it’s about time SOMEONE did!
Posted by: Monolycus | Apr 19 2006 6:07 utc | 3
Mono, if you want sanity, check out the links I put up on the Zarquawi(sp) thread. I’ve had it w/the utter Madness being propogated by Elites….who the flying fuck ever appointed or agreed upon them…
Posted by: jj | Apr 19 2006 6:27 utc | 4
well jonku, mon ami Canadien, Global news – strike that, Global infotainment – last night did one of their quick & dirty phone-in polls and 70% favour military action against Iran.
Posted by: gmac | Apr 19 2006 14:48 utc | 5
The Enron society can’t see beyond this quarter’s satisfactions. Nuclear bombing killing millions of Muslims is good television. If the retaliatory Islamic nuclear strike takes 10 quarters, that is too far in the future to think about.
Posted by: Jim S | Apr 19 2006 16:49 utc | 6
Bummer; the Whiskey Bar is giving me a “connection refused” error.
Posted by: Calamari Face | Apr 19 2006 18:59 utc | 7