When I was a little girl I used to end all my nightly prayers with the words, "And please no nuclear war, and peace on earth. Amen." This was in the early eighties. The knowledge that weapons existed armed and ready which could annihilate all life on earth, including my Mum and my Dad and everyone I loved, kept me up at night.
I still marvel at the fact that these weapons exist, just as armed and just as ready, and we just go about our lives like it's perfectly normal. They're even more prone to malfunction than they were back then, because so many parts of the system are much older now. All it would take is something failing to work the way it's meant to or somebody making a mistake or miscommunication that hadn't been adequately anticipated and prepared for, and it could set into motion a chain of events from which there is no coming back. We've already come within a hair's breadth of nuclear annihilation on more than one occasion due to such occurrances, and yet people still act like preventing that from ever happening isn't the single most important priority for our entire species.
In the days leading up to the Helsinki summit between leaders of Russia and the United States, an open letter titled "Common Ground: For Secure Elections and True National Security" was published and signed by experts, activists and scholars ranging from Noam Chomsky to Gloria Steinem to Daniel Ellsberg to Michael Moore. Part of the letter reads as follows:
"At the same time, the US and Russian governments show numerous signs of being on a collision course. Diplomacy has given way to hostility and reciprocal consular expulsions, along with dozens of near-miss military encounters in Syria and in skies above Europe. Both sides are plunging ahead with major new weapons-development programs. In contrast to prior eras, there is now an alarming lack of standard procedures to keep the armed forces of both countries in sufficient communication to prevent an escalation that could lead to conventional or even nuclear attack. These tensions are festering between two nations with large quantities of nuclear weapons on virtual hair-trigger alert; yet the current partisan fixations in Washington are ignoring the dangers to global stability and, ultimately, human survival."
All of this is completely true. You can perhaps understand why, then, when #TreasonSummit became the top trend on Twitter during the Helsinki summit, little 1983 Caitlin Johnstone wanted to punch everyone spouting that moronic bullshit right in the fucking nose.
Though you'll never hear American mass media talking about it on either MSNBC or Fox News because it doesn't fit the narrative on either side, Trump has actually dangerously escalated cold war tensions with Russia far beyond anything his predecessor dared to do. From adopting a Nuclear Posture Review with greatly increased aggression toward Russia and blurring lines between when nuclear strikes are and are not appropriate, to facilitating the longstanding neoconservative agenda to arm Ukraine (a dangerously hawkish move which Obama adamantly refused to do), to repeatedly bombing the Syrian government and killing Russians in Syria as part of its illegal occupation of that country, to throwing out Russian diplomats on more than one occasion, to expanding NATO with the addition of Montenegro, to aggressive sanctions on Russian oligarchs and more, this administration has inflamed tensions along multiple fronts and increased the probability of something going disastrously, irrevocably wrong.
Whether the US president has been doing these things because that was his plan all along, or because he is beholden to powers which wish to advance such agendas, or because he's caving to political pressures from his opponents in order to avoid accusations of treason, is a question that's open for debate. Personally, I do not care. What matters is the fact that these escalations are there, and that they need to be scaled down, and that I shouldn't have to share a fucking planet with anyone who thinks otherwise.
Opposing talks which could lead to de-escalations between the two countries who own almost all of the nuclear warheads in the world is inexcusable and unforgivable. I don't care if you're dumb enough to swallow the US intelligence community's still completely unsubstantiated claims of Russian hacking. I don't care if you think Trump is bought and owned by Vladimir Putin. Even if both of those things were true, there would still be no excuse for opposing peace talks in a dangerously escalating new cold war. None.
Communication and understanding in this situation is an objectively good thing. This meeting with Russia's leader, which all US presidents have done for many decades, is an objectively good thing. If you have joined in the campaign to help shove the tide of opinion away from peace and toward nuclear holocaust, you are making yourself an enemy of humanity. You have become so warped and demented by your hatred of Donald Trump that it has made a part of you less human.
I despise Donald Trump and everything he stands for, and I despise everything that created him. I hate that I have to know his fucking name. But he is the only President of the United States right now, and he is in a unique position to help steer us away from the iceberg and avoid a confrontation that everyone on earth should want to avoid. Any possibility of that happening, however remote, should be supported.
Only assholes and morons oppose these peace talks. If you want to help steer this ship into the iceberg of nuclear holocaust, then I want you thrown overboard. Get a fucking grip, you raving lunatics. Stop this. Stop this immediately.
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Seriously we have to learn to ignore them. There are people who genuinely don't mind if people die as long as Trump looks bad....really terrible
I totally agree!
Great article. It is a sad state of affairs when it becomes necessary to applaud those whom simply respect the office of POTUS despite their feelings for he who occupies that office. This should be a fucking given. I agree that the nuclear situation should be one of our highest priorities and that only the extreme patience of Russian diplomacy has prevented an escalation in this toxic environment. God forbid what would occur if Putin had a short-fuse. I think my biggest fear is that because we have let the media continue to focus on their narrative that Trump is illegitimate, continued to allow those on the left to propagate the idea that violence is an acceptable substitute for political discord, we will have destroyed the foundation upon which our election system rests. Right now, I feel it is if we just cut the brake-lines of Democracy but won't notice this until we go to slow down and exit the highway. No matter who wins the next election in 2020, no one will accept the result. With the generation following the millennials being labeled 'the most conservative since World War II", a paralyzed and ineffective government and most reasonable people so tired of groups like Antifa being able to get away with open violence they won't mind so much when they get their asses kicked.... can you say "Weinmar Republic"? All that remains is hyperinflation....
LOL love the headline. Don't you know peace is dangerous and war on false pretenses with a nuclear superpower is sensible?
Treason it is!
I'm more than a bit concerned. My FB stream is completely smashed full of TREASON!!!
We're looking, potentially, at Civil War in a few weeks.
If he is ousted, it will be viewed a coup by most Americans, and most of those who view it that way will be OK with it as Drumpf is uniquely ugly and evil and must be out of office at any cost.
I'm afraid this country is a powderkeg and there are so many assholes and morons with matches.
The mass outrage against not dying in a nuclear holocaust is mind blowing.