WWIII's Democratically Diverse Wasteland

in #wwiii7 years ago (edited)

[]

“In nuclear war, all men are cremated equally.”
-Dexter Gordon

Many things offend the Dems these days. But the absolute biggest offense, it seems, is the thought our children might not get to live gnarled, irradiated existences in a derelict post-WWIII wasteland.

Imagine how much diversity they would miss out on if they didn’t get to grow up surrounded by a florid array of sterilized mutants and weren’t forced to catch six-legged rats in sewers for sustenance.

But, seriously.

The Russophobes have dug themselves so deep they can’t turn back now. Through egg-colored goggles, everything is proof the Kremlin is holding Uncle Sammy hostage -- even the deeply concerning lack of drumbeats for nuclear war.

The “smoking gun,” among many:

Here’s the thing…

2017 is the most dangerous year to poke the bear

Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies at Princeton and New York Universities, is the go-to American expert on US-Russia relations.

In April, he said we are in “the most dangerous moment in American-Russian relations, at least since the Cuban missile crisis.”

In some ways, he went on, it’s worse. Not only is it more complex, but Kennedy wasn’t simultaneously accused of being a Soviet spy.

Cohen writes:

“Imagine, for example, John Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis. And for the viewers who are not of a certain age, the Kennedy administration was presented—and the evidence, by the way, was presented to us; they showed us the surveillance photos. There was no doubt what the Soviets had done, putting missile silos in Cuba. No evidence has been presented today of anything. Imagine if Kennedy had been accused of being a secret Soviet Kremlin agent. He would have been crippled. And the only way he could have proved he wasn’t was to have launched a war against the Soviet Union. And at that time, the option was nuclear war.”

The circus would be hilarious if it didn’t mean all life on the planet wasn’t at risk of being irrevocably irradiated out of existence.

“You know it’s easy to joke about this, except that we’re at maybe the most dangerous moment in US-Russian relations in my lifetime, and maybe ever. And the reason is that we’re in a new cold war, by whatever name. We have three cold war fronts that are fraught with the possibility of hot war, in the Baltic region where NATO is carrying out an unprecedented military buildup on Russia’s border, in Ukraine where there is a civil and proxy war between Russia and the west, and of course in Syria, where Russian aircraft and American warplanes are flying in the same territory. Anything could happen.”

You would think, at the very least, the rabid environmentalists would be a little bit more aware of the precariousness of this situation.

After all, you can all but kiss the polar bears goodbye if nukes begin to scar the skies.

Journalist Caitlin Johnstone pointed out the following on her Medium page: “A 2014 report published in the journal Earth’s Future found that it would only take the detonation of 100 nuclear warheads to throw 5 teragrams of black soot into the earth’s stratosphere for decades, blocking out the sun and making the photosynthesis of plants impossible, starving every terrestrial organism to death that didn’t die of radiation or climate chaos first. The United States and Russia currently have about 7,000 nuclear warheads apiece that we know of.”

… just a tad bit worse than a pipeline running through Standing Rock, we suspect.

Let's all go out on a limb here and assume World War III is best left to the imagination.

The third rock from the Sun, after all, is the only home we’ve got.

Sort:  

When two countries have weapons of mass destruction, then a scenario known as M.A.D happens. Mutually Assured Destruction. This essentially discourages either side from using nukes, because they know that if they launch nukes, then the other side will too, ensuring the destruction of both sides. This is why nuclear war HASN'T happened yet, and why nations are so eager to get nuclear weapons. It's because if they don't have nuclear weapons, they are at risk of nuclear annihilation.

I'm aware of MAD. That wasn't the argument -- and it's not necessarily a 100% guarantee nobody will use them. It just hasn't happened yet.