Amid the hustle and bustle of the holidays, no one seems to be celebrating the fact that for all intents and purposes, we no longer live with a thermonuclear gun at our heads.
Of course, one would hate to be found to be premature on this subject, but the Soviet Union does have 9.75 toes in the dustbin of history (conservative estimate), making it highly unlikely that the United States will be nuked.As for those who worry about who has the finger on the Soviet nuclear trigger, famed Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky offers the appropriate scorn: "What a nightmare: For the first time nuclear weapons are not under control of a communist but of the pro-Western democrats!"
Exactly, so if these nerve cases want to worry that Kazakhstan may someday launch ICBMs against Manhattan, let them. Let them worry until their stomachs burst into flames. The rest of us can now kick back, kill the fatted calf (or rutabaga, if you're one of those) and reflect peacefully on the doomsday years.
It was, to say the least, a period of raw nerves and horrific imaginings, a time when one could almost see the dark SS-20s piercing the fluffy clouds above the neighborhood schoolyard, reducing Little Johnny and Sister Sue to small piles of radioactive cinders and killing the rest of us with radiation poisoning. We all remember the nuclear trinity: First Strike, Second Strike, Bouncing Rubble.
Nightmares have consequences, and how many times did we hear this sad refrain: "I could never bring a child into a world like this"? Plenty, and then there were those entire genres of literature, art, film and music dedicated to The End. Students stockpiled death doses in case of attack, and every type of instant gratification was justified, for tomorrow we may all fry.
Yet these were gloomy sideshows. Truly troubling were the never-ending demands for accommodation with indisputable evil (the Soviet government), the justification for which was a moral equivalence in which the Soviet way was equal to our own. We shall remember those who preached those sermons - but not fondly.
Luckily, there were those who believed that Ivan (remember him?) could be beaten with a strong arm rather than knocking knees, a point driven home by Ronald Reagan, whose love of Armageddon, it was often said, would transform the Earth into a charcoal briquet. But history went this way: We built, they built, we built, they went broke. Attempting reform, the Soviet government took its boot off its subjects' throats. They all got up and ran away.
One refrains from excessive gloating, but you've got to admit, something should be said about the people who made an uncomfortable situation nearly unbearable. The list includes nuclear freezers, "ground zero" protesters and several presidential candidates (LBJ and his daisy commerical. Walter Mondale's insistence that Reagan was taking us to "the brink"). To them, undying contempt.
But enough gloom. Now we can laugh while remembering how our ancient elementary school teachers told us to get under our desks should the civil defense sirens sound (proving once again that our instructional crisis didn't start yesterday). And who will miss those moments spent in the contemplation of what it would be like to be vaporized beneath a nuclear skyburst, or perhaps wondering how many megatons it might take to blast a soul apart? Not you. Not me.
"The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking," Albert Einstein wrote, "and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophes."
Not so, Uncle Albert. We now drift toward peace. The nuclear witch melts. And so, in this Christmas season, a touch of instant gratification may be in order. Cheers. We seem to have made it.
Of course, let's keep those fingers crossed.