I’d like to see more of your inner-most thoughts emerge. I agree with you in that something’s gotta give. I can understand that for someone like you with children and grandchildren you don’t want it to happen however I believe humans will soon reap the harvest they have sown.
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This is my take on it. The only thing that has kept a third global war from occurring is the godawful consequences of one. Mutual assured destruction, MAD, has worked, for now. That much is obvious. Since 1945 many thousands of nuclear weapons have been built to increasing levels of lethality and power. Delivery systems have been improved: cruise missiles, submarines, bombers, ICBM's. The nightmarish scenario of all this weaponry being unleashed on the world's cities has actually kept the "peace" for 70 years. Peace for the west that is, not for millions of non-Westerners.
The 1989 collapse of the USSR disrupted the status quo of a bipolar world. Since then we have seen the rise of China as a major economic and military power who rightly wants their seat at the table. Russia has fell on hard times yet still possesses state of the art technology and weapons. The US has been abusing its unipolar position as the world's only superpower since the first gulf war. Pakistan, India, North Korea, Israel, have all become members of the nuclear club. These are the ones we know about. And unfortunately, possessing nuclear weapons is the only guarantee a nation's borders and sovereignty will be respected, thus the race for nations like Iran and others to acquire them. The failure of the UN in its mandate has returned the world to a Hobbesian nightmare, but only now with nukes. More state actors have them. There are fault lines all over the world, from the South China Sea to Syria and Iran and Ukraine. It just seems awfully naive to believe, with all the brinkmanship going on and the tit for tat bullshit, that this can continue without the balloon going up somewhere.
There has never been a time in history where a long period of technological development didn't lead to a nation believing it could attack an enemy, preemptively, and defeat them. The American Civil War utilized the first submarines, aerial reconnaissance, railroads, machine guns, etc. 1903 saw the Wright brothers conquer the skies. Eleven years later their miraculous, promising, invention was weaponized over Europe. The USA dragged the world into the nuclear era with the Trinity Test on July 16, 1945. After witnessing a level of killing power never imagined before there was no reflection, no hesitation; only two weeks later, on Aug 6, 1945, an atomic bomb was used on the civilian population of Hiroshima. "Was used" sounds so sanitary and normal. What "was used" means is 150,000 human beings were either incinerated immediately or forced to live with physical and emotional scars, and radiation poisoning, for the rest of their lives; women and children. And this was done by the "good guys." Human nature hasn't changed since then.
Political science is premised on the idea that human nature is predictable. That studying the way the human animal has acted in the past can provide a guide to how he will act in the future. That is what scares the hell out of me. Not thinking about it doesn't lessen the threat, it increases it. A nuclear winter isn't a Left-Right issue. It's in everyone's interest to see a reduction in the probability of nuclear war, and thinking about it and talking about it, as unpleasant as it is, is the necessary beginning. Billions of innocent children in this world deserve as much.
Bleak but accurate of course. I don’t know the answers, hell, I’m not sure if I really know the questions either. We’re just humans and as such seem to have a proclivity for self-destruction and a willingness to take the planet with us. Is it greed or is it a deep-seated need to feel safe and protected? I’m not sure. I think we have it in our nature to survive, think Neanderthals and Sapiens, however surviving these days seems to mean taking something away from someone else. Sounds like greed to me.
But what do I know.
Thanks for your comment here @dissfordents. You’re a great thinker and I’m glad to have run into you on steemit.
Likewise @galenkp, you've proven that camaraderie can be had online, something I've always doubted. You're a straight-up guy, no airs. Maybe its because us "gun guys" have nothing to prove.
I really appreciate you saying so. My wife and I are reasonably private people and don't share a lot outside of our unit, have a small friends group, and focus on designing and creating our own ideal life and so all this sharing on steemit is a little new. Having said that I have engaged with some interesting people and have enjoyed doing so.
I appreciate people being straight-up with me and like to reciprocate which is what you have picked up on I guess. Relationships on the interwebs are funny aren't they? Back in the day of Yahoo Messenger people from across the world would fall in love and move countries only to find that the person at the other end was [surprise] not that person at all! However, when people engage with honesty, openness and in a forthright manner then I believe it's possible to actually get to know someone reasonably well without the fog of visual perception.
Thanks for your comment. Greatly appreciated.