Dr. Strangelove: Can a movie be hilarious and horrifying at the same time?

from movieposters.com

“Mankind is petty, selfish, aggressive and short-tempered, and we will demonstrate these tendencies in the utilization of any technology that is available to us.” Philosopher Thomas Hobbes may be right, and Stanley Kubrick’s amazing film Dr. Strangelove represents this thought perfectly. The movie to me was an absurd satire on our modern nuclear society. As Roger Ebert put it, “Dr. Strangelove’s’ humor is generated by a basic comic principle: People trying to be funny are never as funny as people trying to be serious and failing.”

Kubrick behind the scenes

Creating a weapon of the magnitude of an atom bomb is an act of insecurity and national xenophobia. Everyone in the world is ironically less safe because the inventors of the bomb sought to make their own countries more safe.

Every character that comes to mind demonstrates ridiculous egotism and oblivion to all interests but his own. Take, for instance, how everyone is concerned with the ratio of men to women in the bunkers. Even after they have screwed up so badly that the entire world is in ruin, they are concerned only with their own sexual gratification.

Kubrick portrays our vulgar base tendencies in a very Freudian manner through phallic symbolism. I feel like the movie is pretty much summarized by the scene where Major Kong plummets to the ground with a giant atomic bomb between his legs. The arms race becomes a metaphor for who has the biggest penis, the US or Soviet Union?

The seemingly random line at the end of the movie, “Mein Fuhrer! I can walk!” I perceive as a cry of victory; Dr. Strangelove represents crippled fascism. If thought about this way, the movie seems to infer that Fascism is not dead, but crippled and waiting for the chance to “strike” again. So the film shows the irony in the fact that the US and Russia, after defeating fascism, built nuclear weapons which represented rule by military force and the possibility of mass holocaust to an even greater extent than the Nazis did.

This film shows that blundering politicians are just actors made to look in charge of things. In reality, the military ran the show and there was nothing anyone could do in the end to save them from the giant military industrial complex.

The absurdity Kubrick is trying to convey is that we created weapons that can destroy the planet, and the men in charge of them are flawed, as every human is. It’s tragically humorous, and hits close to home.

The Modern-Age Nuclear Arms Race: Why Can’t We Disarm Our Nuclear Weapons?

For the last forty years, the United States and the Soviet Union (as well as the other members of the always growing “nuclear club”) have spent massive resources on a nuclear arms race that could have been avoided through a workable international control plan. “The Franck Report” stated, “Unless an effective international control of nuclear explosives is instituted, a race for nuclear armaments is certain to ensue following the first revelation of our possession of nuclear weapons to the world.”

Who is to blame for this arms race? In the video the author states Stalin and in part, Truman, were to blame for this race to arms. I think more emphasis on Truman for creating unnecessary tensions with the Soviet Union. Whether Stalin would have accepted any international control plan, however reasonable, is an unanswerable question. But would Roosevelt had he survived, or Henry Wallace become president, have done things differently than Truman? I think, absolutely yes. I don’t believe the atom bombs would have been dropped in the first place, and the out of control arms race may never have existed. It’s naive to believe Stalin would have given up his nuclear weaponry so easily, but I don’t think there would have been as much paranoia and uncertainty had Roosevelt survived.

from jspavey.com

The CIA predicted ten countries could go nuclear within a decade, by 1975 it concluded that “logically” nuclear proliferation would only subside when “all political actors, state and non-state, are equipped with nuclear armaments.”A quarter century and one nuclear power later (both South Africa and Pakistan acquired a nuclear-weapons capability during this time, but South Africa dismantled all its nuclear weapons by 1991), CIA director George Tenet announced in 2003 that we had entered “a new world of proliferation” and warned “the ‘domino theory’ of the twenty-first century may well be nuclear.”

from mathewvandyke,com

Still, just because nuclear forbearance has been the norm thus far doesn’t necessarily mean this will continue into the future. In fact, according to Shavit, an Iranian bomb would “force Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt to acquire their own.” Even President Obama believes that if Iran gets nuclear weapons, its neighbors will be “compelled” to do the same.

There is no evidence for this, but it certainly brings us back historically to the first nuclear arms race. What happened? What could we have done differently? I believe hindsight into the past will make decisions easier for our present and future.

References:

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/nuclear_arms_race.htm

http://www.atomcentral.com/the-cold-war.aspx

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security/news/2010/05/06/7852/questioning-the-conventional-wisdom-on-a-middle-east-nuclear-arms-race/

Harry S. Truman: 5th Best President or Racist War-criminal?

Harry S. Truman – Voted Fifth Best President – CNBC

In 1924, Harry S. Truman was a judge in Jackson County, Missouri. When he was up for re-election, he decided it best to join the Ku Klux Klan to better his chances of getting reelected. He’s also known for this famous quote, taken from one of his diaries:  “The Jews have no sense of proportion nor do they have any judgement on world affairs. The Jews, I find are very, very selfish. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the under dog.”

Source: http://www.trumanlibrary.org/diary/page21.htm

How did a man so racist get 77% of the Black vote during his election of 1948? In short, it was thanks to his issuing an order of desegregation to the armed services and an executive order setting up regulations against racial bias in federal employment.

People are torn on Harry Truman. Some proclaim him a war criminal, as the act of dropping two atomic bombs on civilian cities to “end World War II” could be seen as a war crime. The massive cover up of the atomic bombings and its effects also shed a negative light on his administration. Others see him as a true American hero, ending the great war and showing the world we were not afraid to defend ourselves by use of nuclear weaponry. I see him as a timid man, unsure of himself and paranoid. His secrecy and arrogance of Nuclear Weaponry led to many tensions with the Soviet Union. Had FDR not died, I think history would have been very different (I don’t believe he would have dropped the atomic bombs, nor do I think the cold war would have escalated so rapidly).

from historywarnetwork.com

Jon Stewart from the Daily Show has recently taken the position that Harry Truman was a war criminal. This video shows segments of the show and why the reporter thinks Jon Stewart is wrong.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW VIDEO

I don’t agree with this reporter or this video at all. I don’t think the US gave fair warning (booklets dropped from airplanes above both cities about to be destroyed 5 days prior? Thanks America, good looking out for civilians there!) Also, he uses the attack on Pearl Harbor to justify both Atomic attacks on civilian cities, just as President Truman did.

“I was greatly disturbed over the unwarranted attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor. The only language they seem to understand is the one we’ve been using to bombard them”. (Mark Selden, Living with the Bomb, p. 181).

How can you seriously use the bombing of Pearl Harbor to justify dropping an atomic bomb on TWO civilian cities?  While I agree the Pearl Harbor attacks were unwarranted, they targeted a major naval base and not the surrounding civilian centers (though civilians did die, not nearly the number of causalities in Hiroshima and Nagasaki).

Death Toll Pearl Harbor – 2,402 military, 68 civilian
Death Toll Hiroshima and Nagasaki – more than 200,000 civilian

I can’t believe Harry Truman is shown in such good light today. We are able to look at presidents’ faults and accomplishments easily now. Focusing too much on their negatives or positives can lead to bias, but studying Truman’s presidency is increasingly showing the many faults he had, and I think the biggest one (dropping both Atomic Bombs) is an issue many Americans are torn on even today.

Sources:

Selden, Mark. Living with the Bomb: American and Japanese Cultural Conflicts in the Nuclear Age . Santa Barbara: East Gate Book, 1997. Print. p.181

We have all heard of the Red Scare, the fear of communism in the USA, but was there a “Blue Scare” (fear of capitalism) in the Soviet Union?

This poster is of a Soviet worker refusing to fall for the temptations of American Capitalism. A major fear for the Soviet Union.

McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Red Scare.  This period was characterized by heightened fears of communist influence on American institutions and spying by Soviet agents. The term is also now used more generally to describe reckless, unsubstantiated accusations, as well as attacks on the character or patriotism of political adversaries. Everyone who went into politics during this “Red Scare” would always accuse the other party of having “Communist Goals”. (Byman, 56-62)

While fear of Communism spreading in America was rampant, I often wondered if the same idea was going on in the Soviet Union at the time. Was the Soviet Union also completely afraid of Capitalism spreading throughout the country? The answer is yes, and no.

This is a very good article explaining the Purges and Hysteria that spread throughout the Soviet Union. Click on it to read, as it covers a lot of the reasons why the Soviet Union and Stalin were so paranoid.

from blackrainbow.blogspot.com

For the Americans, a Communist was a person who could spread (certain) ideas. It was the communist ideas that were feared, because they could spread via the political system. They could be bundled into a political campaign and eventually lead to a change in the laws of the state. Thus, what the Americans feared were general political and economic changes.

In the Eastern Bloc the political and economic system was deemed solid. It was not imagined as possible for capitalist ideas to spread through politics. There was no political freedom since there was only one “leading” party. So the fear was that capitalist ideas would corrupt people individually, much like a disease would affect a single person at a time. (Edmonds, 113-120)

In the early, formative years, while “Communism” was still being established, the major fear was that the “infected” would cause damage to the still fragile “new order” within the communist state. A person with affiliation to Capitalism would become a spy, he would export state secrets or actually damage equipment, and of course spread “capitalist vices” amongst the population. (Haynes, 98-102)

from americanspy.org

In those times the general population in the East did indeed fear “capitalism”, as it was seen as a damaging force within their everyday life. For example, a factory breakdown would often be attributed to a spy damaging the equipment. Same for a crop blight, etc.

Communism had its own cultural symbols, which were clearly defined and considered unchangeable. All cultural content had to concern itself with “the working class” and its communist values. The rebelliousness of rock-and-roll and the individuality of the skintight jeans were opposing their community spirit and uniformity of life. (Haynes, 39-40)

The problem? America was now seen as a place where people had better things.

from mpamerica.com

It was at that time feared that the “infected” (with capitalist ideas) would behave in a disruptive way which would affect the values of the communist society. It was not the political and economic system that was endangered, but the minds of the people, society itself.

To counter this growing affection for “western joys”, the political leaders started to emphasize on the negative issues of capitalism, such as racism, unemployment, the homeless, the street violence, and of course the nuclear threat and general warmongering. With the spread of television, such images became widely available. (Haynes, 42-45)

The fear of capitalism then was well defined and quite strong amongst the general population. It was very natural to fear losing your job, becoming homeless, being bullied because of your appearance, or being beaten by gangs or by ruthless police. And all that could happen if capitalism came to town!

Due to propaganda, “Capitalism” and “America” were the interchangeable in people’s minds. This type of fear was an automatic response to which people had been trained for decades.

Sources:

Byman, Jeremy (2004). Showdown at High Noon: Witch-hunts, Critics, and the End of the Western. Scarecrow Press.

Haynes, John Earl, and Harvey Klehr (2003). In Denial: Historians, Communism, and Espionage. Encounter.

Edmonds, Robin. Soviet Foreign Policy: The Brezhnev Years (1983)

Radiation: Now You See It, Now You Don’t

Little is known about Wilfred Burchett, author of Shadow of Hiroshima. He was  an independent Australian journalist who wanted to travel to Hiroshima after the US had dropped their Atomic Bomb, destroying the city. General Douglas MacArthur had declared southern Japan off-limits, barring the press. Wilfred Burchett was determined to see what the effects of the nuclear bomb had been, so he defied orders and boarded a train to Hiroshima. What he saw shocked him to his core. His dispatch was printed by the Daily Express newspaper in London on September 5, 1945, entitled “The Atomic Plague”, the first public report to mention the effects of radiation and nuclear fallout.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0810-01.htm

This article by Amy and David Goodman  explains Wilfred Burchett’s trip to Hiroshima. The damage is far greater than any photograph can take. “When you arrive in Hiroshima you can look around for twenty-five and perhaps thirty square miles. You can see hardly a building. It gives you an empty feeling in the stomach to see such man-made destruction.” (Wilfred Burchett Quote).

Before and After pictures of Hiroshima

As expected, Burchett’s reporting was unpopular with the U.S. military. The military accused Burchett of being under the sway of Japanese propaganda. William L. Lawrence of  The New York Times dismissed the reports on radiation sickness as Japanese efforts to undermine American morale.  The official narrative of the atomic bombings severely underestimated civilian casualties and categorically dismissed reports of the deadly lingering effects of radiation.

In a time of Propaganda running rampart on all sides of the war, the American people did not know who was telling the truth. No information at all was coming from the US Military. After General MacArthur found out about Wilfred Burchett, he ordered him to be expelled from Japan , and his camera with photos of Hiroshima mysteriously vanished while he was in a Japanese hospital.

Propaganda was really the best way for countries to control their populace. Government’s were able to suppress journalists and only let the people read what they wanted them to. There was no internet, an amazing tool of free speech, or any way at all to get reliable information. Wilfred Burchett never won any prizes nor was recognized at all until much later. It was very clear upon entering Hiroshima the effects of Nuclear weaponry. The American government had no intentions of revealing to the American people the absolute horror of what they had just done.

Wilfred Burchett before entering Hiroshima.

Who Cares about the Cuban Missile Crisis?

This video, by Don Morrison, is a little long winded but argues that in order to get rid of nuclear paranoia the worlds leaders must all get rid of their nuclear weapons. In Gary Will’s “Bomb Power”, he argued that the Cuban Missile Crisis was triggered by the aggression of an overactive White House. Castro and Khrushchev put tactical and intermediate range nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba to deter the United States from re-invading Cuba and to balance the deterrent power of American nuclear-tipped missiles in Turkey. The video explains why leaders can be so paranoid. An attack on their country first would not only kill millions of people, it would trigger an all out nuclear war that could destroy the world.

from crazy-frankenstein.com

I view the Cuban Missile Crisis as one of the most significant events in the past 50 years. We were very close to what many considered world annihilation, man-kind has never had this kind of power. I think Mutually Shared Destruction (MAD) is a big deterrent in nuclear war, but one little mistake or miscalculation could cause a reaction that would lead us into war. Russian Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov may have single handedly saved the entire world. He was manning a nuclear site, and the Russians had reports that missiles had been shot by us. The radar was clear and they went into code red, he was given permission to fire missiles in retaliation. He chose not to act, saving perhaps billions of lives.

(online source) (Another Online Source, Washington Post)

It’s certainly possible for a nuclear war to happen even when no one wants it, but it’s extremely unlikely and can only ever be a mistake. I believe most world power leaders realize that any kind of nuclear attack on a country would either mean certain destruction themselves or severe consequences from the U.N and most other world leaders. However, mistakes can be made, and if a terrorist organization was ever to get ahold of nuclear weaponry the results could be devastating. We need to work together to get rid of all nuclear weapons, but I doubt we will see it happen in our lifetime.

Bill Gates TED talk on his view for the future of energy

Bill Gates is working with experts developing a new kind of nuclear reactor that would run on nuclear waste. We have trillions of dollars worth of nuclear waste in the US. It’s useless to create nuclear weapons with, and until recently, it was thought too expensive  and difficult to build. These reactors are called Traveling Wave Reactors.

“A traveling-wave reactor, or TWR, is a kind of nuclear reactor that can convert fertile material into fissile fuel as it runs using the process of nuclear transmutation. TWRs differ from other kinds of fast-neutron and breeder reactors in their ability to, once started, reach a state whereafter they can achieve very high fuel utilization while using no enriched uranium and no reprocessing, instead burning fuel made from depleted uranium, natural uranium, thorium, spent fuel removed from light water reactors, or some combination of these materials. TWRs are also capable, in principle, of reusing their own fuel. The used metal fuel from TWRs will still contain a high fissile content. Recast and reclad into new driver pellets without separations, this recycled fuel could be used to start fission in additional TWRs, thus displacing the need to enrich uranium altogether.” – http://www.terrapower.com/Technology/TravelingWaveReactor.aspx

As this is a test for my first blog, I thought this TED talk was rather interesting to share. Company scientists estimate that wide deployment of TWRs could enable projected global stockpiles of depleted uranium to sustain 80% of the world’s population at U.S. per capita energy usages for over a millennium. However, many US citizens are opposed to nuclear power. In short 1) it is very expensive and 2) renewable and efficiency increases (Wind/Solar) are a far more effective path to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Of course safety is another huge factor for people who remember Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, but we have had almost 450 civilian nuclear reactors running worldwide for the last 24 years now, with not a single accident. Safety standards are very high now, largely thanks to the big 3 historic accidents.

from: http://nuclearpoweryesplease.org/

I believe Nuclear Energy is not the boogeyman we make it out to be, but is on par with wind and hydro energy, about twice as clean as solar, six times as clean as “clean” coal, and ten times as clean as natural gas. – http://www.iaea.org/OurWork/ST/NE/Pess/assets/Weisser_Howells&Rogner_Nuclear_post_2012.pdf