Reading today's posts, it appears we've lost our fear of The Bomb....

[Junkdrawer]

The Bomb is being discussed as just a bigger weapon of war.

And that's frightening.

[PowerToThePeople]

1. just need a background check, then gtg.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023367471

[Recursion]

2. It wasn't even the biggest weapon of war in WWII (napalm was)

While I do think the psychological effect of the bomb helped keep the cold war from getting hotter than it did, I don't see why people insist on claiming it's existentially different from other weapons. Dead is dead.

[quinnox]

6. Aren't the nukes we have today much more powerful?

So you wouldn't think it was a big deal if one of them was used. Good to know.

[Recursion]

11. Right, that's what I said

Can you try to be serious about this?

[quinnox]

14. "I don't see why people insist on claiming it's existentially different from other weapons. Dead is

dead."

That is what you said. Hence my reaction and post.

[iandhr]

3. More people died...

during the conventional bombing of Tokyo then with the A-Bombs.

[Isoldeblue]

4. Not me

I would never underestimate the lunacy of power hungry leaders like Putin or from N. Korea (can't think of his name) to use it to gain more power.

[dbackjon]

5. I don't get that at all

If Hiroshima or Nagasaki had not been bombed (and the death tolls for both countries would have been far higher), a bomb would have been used SOMEWHERE, by someone.

[Dreamer Tatum]

7. Speaking for myself

I've lost the fear of sanctimonious armchair generals and forensic historians who have somehow gleaned new insight into the thoughts and feelings of American and Japanese leaders from 70 years ago.

[iandhr]

8. And most of us have watched Dr. Strangelove.

We don't fear a doomsday machine so why would we fear one bomb

[Deep13]

9. No, we are talking about the end of WWII...

before there were H bombs, ICBMs, jet bombers, or nuclear-armed and powered submarines. In 1945 the A bomb did less damage than than the fire-bombing of Tokyo. Those bombs were measure in kilotons of TNT, not megatons. This was before a nuclear mushoom cloud was big enough to extend into outer space. And it was before 60 years of nuclear fear. (I almost wrote "paranoia," but during the cold war, the threat was quite real.)

[RebelOne]

10. No, as a child during the time after the war,

I would have to go through drills in school should we get hit. I remember having to crawl under my school desk (as if that would help). I had and still have nightmares of seeing a mushroom cloud in the distance and searching for loved ones.

[Downwinder]

13. Already been bombed. Didn't feel a thing for thirty years.

Now we have Fukushima, it does not go boom. It just goes and goes.

[roamer65]

12. 1945 was not 1962.

We do have a fear of nuclear weapons as they exist now and thank the cloud beings we had a President in office in October 1962 who did fear them as well. John Kennedy saved this world from nuclear annihilation.

[villager]

15. Well, listen, people are rushing to explain why they no longer need the 4th Amendment, too

In other words, even here at the "Underground," many of the self-styled "sophisticates" are quite capable of being manipulated into believing... anything.

[leveymg]

20. Didn't Orwell say, “There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them."

You're right, I wouldn't even call them intellectuals. Many of the self-styled "sophisticates" are so absurd that they believe they are capable of manipulating the rest of us into believing black is white, which is another Orwell principle. They are silly people, which is a Monty Python principle.

"Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations." - George Orwell

[Posteritatis]

16. I admire your ability to strip all context from the discussion. (nt)

[99Forever]

17. Brutality, military insanity, and bland acceptance of monsterous...

... murdering machines as "ok," is the new normal.

Even here.



How fucked up is that?

[LWolf]

18. Yes.

Yet, we're controlled by fear in so many other arenas.

[Junkdrawer]

21. "You mean there was a time when White People were bombed, too."

My son's comment after I explained that after WW II and the bombing of London, Dresden, etc, the fear that the Bomb would be used in anger frightened many.

[NuclearDem]

19. Compared to the bomb of even just ten years later, it was

Hiroshima and Nagasaki are at least inhabitable. The fallout created even from nuclear reactor accidents renders entire areas uninhabitable for decades.