nuclear ambitions
Offline I had a conversation with my best friend near new years of last year, reflecting back upon all the changes that had occurred, whether the next year would bring as many. That conversation has born out in ways never thought imaginable and in more than just personal life.
Who would have maintained the possibility 5 years ago that the U.S. would invade a country based on faslified data and lies? Who would have believed a year ago that the U.S. would pass laws legalizing torture and the suspension of basic human rights? Would would have thought a month ago that a republican sex scandal would be covered up and dismissed as being simply the case of a homosexual gone amok?
North Korea has the bomb and no, it isn't that the country is hip, it's that they have the nuclear bomb, the destroyer of cities in a single blast of radioactive carnage. Should america be afraid? Not personally perhaps, as the technology isn't available to attack us, but afraid for the world, yes, definitely that.
How did this come to be? How did a nation that up to 5 years ago didn't even have a working nuclear program, build one so quickly? Because the leader felt he had no choice. Get rid of for a moment thoughts of Kim Jong-Il's madness and other deprecating thoughts and focus on the fact of what has occurred. Bush's "asix of evil" speech portrayed Il as a marked man, waiting to be destroyed. How is one to be taken seriously when such words are used? Simple, have a weapon that forces everyone to take you seriously.
This of course goes beyond Bush's complete stupidity in understanding the asian mindset of honor and "face." It goes to the issue of Bush and his followers "us vs them" and "punitive discipline" thinking, as if the world was a child to be spanked. N. Korea asked to be taken seriously, they asked to be at least nominally accepted as a legitimate nation in face-to-face talks with the U.S. We snubbed them and now are paying the price.
The harm caused by arrogance and close-mindedness is not often so easily shown, but as tens of thousands die due to the horrible policies of this administration, clear examples are staring us in the face daily.
Every one of your relationships to man and to nature must be a definite expression of your real, individual life corresponding to the object of your will. -Erich Fromm
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Nobody really cares about the destroying cities thing anymore.
The real fear about nukes is a high-altitude burst causing an EMP that can knock out any unshielded electronics. You car would stop running because the fuel injection timer would be toast. Your phone would be toast. Electricity would fail, as a result, water pressure would fail, the factories to make replacement parts wouldn't have the electricity they need to make replacement parts, you wouldn't be able to access your computer, chances are the bank's records of your account would be wiped clean unless they keep the records on computers kept inside faraday cages but in any case you wouldn't get the money until the power came back on and the dollar would collapse in the meantime.
mmm, that's a very Robb Revere depiction of what might happen, not entirely based in fact.
however, reason_passion is right about the promotion of sword-rattling globally, but it is definitely not the sole fault of the Bush family. it's been building slowly for decades, and, like cancer, it wasn't caught back then, so there's definitely no way to halt it completely now.
my personal assessment, which i think is the most realistic, is that this is the age when the weak will finally reap it, the "karma" for all the years of protection granted by governments worldwide. a new epoch of barbarity is coming into effect, and it's time to shed the billions of pounds of monkey-on-our-back that we've accrued since WWII.
Fear is the mindkiller.