The East Is Red

We can survive a nuclear War. It's scarcely credible, I     know, but listen.     The human race has great resilience. We've come back     before    -     all those plagues, the Black Death,     despoliations, scorched earth policies "prove" it.     We're proliferate and we love the sex act. It won't be     hard; human fecundity is a count-on. There are so     many of us, see.     People have overestimated the alleged horror. After     all, (Khruschev pounding a UN table with his shoes).     somebody walked away from firebombing at Dresden.     Look at at all the escapees in Hiroshima. Get the drift?     A Bomb's a Bomb. Really. The really big one (to take     Ed Sullivan'a phrase out of context) is just more of the     same. Try to absorb that logic. Ergo, Ignorance must     be, in toto strength.     Enraged by the impropriety of it all? Anyone who     disagrees with this is coarse and vulgar.     Of course there would have to be "preparations". (If     you have "to prepare" to be a hairdresser, it stands to     reason you would have to ready yourself for this.)     Confronting, facts you can die only once. After that,     the mushroom cloud is anticlimactic. Remember the     Magic Mushroom    -    the cult that centred its teachings     around Christianlty's debt to hallucegenic drugs?     Some said preposterous    -    Christ a magician doping     his followers and using the Cross as a stage prop.     Amazing. In this world anything is possible. We have     finally created a mutant of people who eccept     anything. And God just another man, albeit a tricky     devil at that. Imagine fooling everyone for 2,000     years!     Next, we'll be told we're actually dead. I know some of     you have already suspected this but it will be     "confirmed". Our leaders will troopse out impressive     sounding "flow charts" and backup statistics. There     will even be a special chamber to experience what it     was like before you knew you were dead with     carefully monitored "response signals" to give the     audience a "sensasound" aura just like living through     an earthquake, only fake. Just remember Monty     Python and "possibility".     Meanwhile, in ensuing preparations for war, no     aspect of the psychological preparedness should be     overlooked. We don't have to be told there is no     substitute for victory.     "The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience     of a King." Hamlet knew. So does The Kremlin. The     KGB can "prove" a nuclear scenario is winnable.     According to the most painstaking calculations, a     conventional war of any duration "swings" into a pre-nuclear     stage. That's when the nuclear option     becomes "viable". That's when Gorbachev and the     boys calculate "target readiness" and plummet the     depths of the human spirit.     The East is Red and ready. The Chinese have been told     by Mao 300 million or their number cremated is a     small price for global supremacy. A human dung hill     is being set in motion for another generation of     poppies. Marx lends credibility to this, but with a     different opiate for the masses. The     lumpenproletariat can hack it. Such clever playing     with facts, now I understand genius.     For a young physicist, a 100 megaton blast is the     culmination of the creative spirit. Certainly     irrefutable evidence, this quintessential "spirit".     I read Toronto would be "messy" in the event of a     nuclear strike. Half-baked and eviscerated thinking     Or just inescaspable?     Chin up. We'll survive or at least part of us will. We     really are "malleable". It will be a "transitional stage",     a step upwards on the evolutionary ladder.     Radioactivity and genetics are at work with one     another.     When the Enola Gay dropped the first atomic device,     the pilot was later to go mad.     Maybe this has already happened to the world and     there's no one to discern the difference.     Maybe a forest of "maybes" has already sprouted and     left a forest of dust clouding the collective vision.     Maybe it's all too terrifying to be taken seriously and     disbelief is the escape hatch. Like the pilot's lapse into     comforting drugs for reassurance or the dervishes     with their Magic Mushroom.     Maybe it's closer to what Harry Truman announced     after "deploying" the first "device" or exercising the     nuclear option in the jargon of the strategists.     They started it. We prepared to end it. No regrets.     Turned over on his deathbed and went to sleep