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From: mjk@tty3b.UUCP (Mike Kelly)
Newsgroups: net.tv,net.politics
Subject: Re: The Day After
Message-ID: <248@tty3b.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 15-Nov-83 17:59:38 EST
Article-I.D.: tty3b.248
Posted: Tue Nov 15 17:59:38 1983
Date-Received: Wed, 16-Nov-83 07:36:14 EST
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Organization: Teletype Corp., Skokie, Ill
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Not having seen the film as of yet, I can't say whether or not
it espouses a political message.  Frankly, I hope it does, in the
sense that Allen England uses the word "political".  Allen says,
"[The Day After] clearly espouses the view that current US nuclear
policy is wrong and will inevitably lead to nuclear war."  To
many people, that is not political, but simply common sense.  As
I said at the end of my previous submission to net.politics, "If
we don't turn around soon, we're going to end up where we're headed."
No one -- absolutely no one -- has every offered a plausible scenario
for an indefinite nuclear arms race.  Do you really believe -- CAN you
really believe -- that the world can continue to build weapons, and yet
NEVER use them?  Do you really believe -- CAN you really believe -- that
if Lawrence, Kansas, or Leningrad were destroyed in a "limited" nuclear
war, the life expectancy of the rest of the world could be 
longer than a few hours?

Jonathan Schell, in an excellent book on the topic, "The Fate of the Earth",
wrote of deterrence:

	"The doctrine is diagrammatic of the world's failure to
	 come to terms with the nuclear predicament.  In it, two
	 irreconcilable purposes clash ... We cannot both threaten
	 ourselves with something and hope to avoid that same thing
	 by making the threat -- both intend to do something and
	 intend not to do it ... For if we try to guarantee our
	 safety by threatening ourselves with doom, then we have
	 to mean the threat; but if we mean it, then we are actually
	 planning to do, in some circumstance or another, that which
	 we categorically must never do and are supposedly trying to
	 prevent -- namely, extinguish ourselves.  This is the circularity
	 at the core of the nuclear deterrence doctrine; we seek to avoid
	 our self-extinction by threatening to perform the act."

Is there really a political argument over deterrence?   Or are there simply
those who refuse to consider the incredible, glaring illogic of the doctrine
and those to whom the illogic is manifest?  Should the opponents have equal
time?  Certainly -- they can only spout the irrelevancies  to which we are
all quite accustomed: that the Soviet Union is really evil, you know, and
we need all those nuclear bombs so that if they try anything, like blowing
up the world 36 times, boy, will they be surprised when we blow it up 37 times.

So bring on Falwell.  We can handle him easily.  It's the "cold, rational"
types who worry me.

Mike Kelly
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