Nukes and Everyone Else

Throughout the semester we have discussed very little about the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki or the Cold War culture that followed. At least, we haven't discussed things in this frame of the Cold War. We have examined the "nuclear family," suburbs into the 21st century, and so on, but it makes me curious.

We always have heard that after WWII all the American soldiers came back home, thus we have the "baby boomers" and all kinds of stuff. But I wonder even more about the national consciousness and whether or not someone other than Kurt Vonnegut saw the grave implications of what ended WWII: the a-bomb.

I am writing about this now because anything nuclear--culture, industry, science and ethics, literature, history--has interested me for some time and because President Barack Obama has recently signed a nuclear treaty with Russia. It is an interesting move on behalf of both parties involved. And, frankly, I laugh when I hear people say that less nuclear war heads that could blow up this earth dozens and dozens times over, makes the US or the whole world any less safe.

I think we could stand to get rid of a few, and so could Russia. And I would really like to see the congress not actually try to have a 2/3 majority. That is, I would like to see them try to convince me that somehow we are safer if we can blow up the earth 100 times instead of 50 times.

Of course, we would have been much better off if the a-bomb had never been made. So it goes.