Reading Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick's wonderful "The Untold History of the United States," Mad Dog recalls the things they tell of, things buried in his memories.
The title is something of a misnomer--what these authors tell is not "untold," as Mad Dog remembers nearly everything they say about the 1950's, and even the stories set in earlier decades are hardly untold, merely forgotten, covered under layers of dust. What they have written is really, "The Forgotten History of the United States."
Going over those golden decades of the 1950's, the "Leave It To Beaver," segregated, halcyon days to which MAGA wants to return us, the whole Eisenhower era, where a man could support his wife and family and have a car and a lake house on his factory salary, where serious men in the highest levels of the government wanted to use atomic bombs to cut a new Panama canal, to melt the polar ice caps, to intimidate the Communists into submission, to threaten Guatemala, Cuba and any other Latin American country who dared challenge the American United Fruit Company, the sheer lunacy of the times comes back into focus. Let's dig missile silos into the moon so we can attack the Soviet Union from space. Generals, Congressmen, up and down the chain of command, American officials were saying this stuff.
"Atoms for Peace" was Eisenhower's response to the outcry from scientists and a partially aroused public, when people like Einstein and Bertrand Russell sounded alarm bells about nuclear weapons threatening to end mankind.
But that was all a con--Eisenhower's basic strategy, embraced by his loyalists (Dulles, Nixon, General Curtis LeMay et al), was to simply threaten with nuclear annihilation anyone who opposed the commercial interests of American corporations, or the political interests of the United States. He insisted nuclear weapons were just another addition to our military arsenal, and he considered using them in Korea, Indochina (later called "Vietnam" after he left office), the Suez Canal and elsewhere.
That benign looking, grandfatherly figure was mad as a hatter when it came to nukes. Even Churchill thought so.
We could dig new harbors with nuclear bombs on the Alaskan coast; we could make new medicines with nuclear fallout; we could blast the earth in Arizona down toward the hot, magna core of the planet, for thermal heating systems. We could kill all the snakes in Africa with a-bombs! (How the bombs were going to select out the snakes, apparently, was not a problem anyone could solve.)
And don't forget our missile bases on the moon, which one wag said would be run by the Department of Luna-cy.
As is true now, the American public had no clear idea of who to believe, but then Neville Shute published a book, a novel, called, "On The Beach," and a movie soon followed.
It simply described the aftermath of a nuclear world war, encapsulated in an Australian beach town waking up to the appearance off shore of an American submarine which has taken refuge, after firing its missiles. We meet the commander and crew of the submarine and we meet the Australian folks who take them in. Some star crossed romances ensue, but mostly what follows is the nuclear cloud, which crosses the equator and heads down toward Australia, ineluctably, as it moves toward the final elimination of human life on earth.
Churchill sent a copy to Khrushchev in Moscow, but he did not send a copy to Eisenhower because, Churchill said, Eisenhower had become "too muddle headed" to read it, or to appreciate it if he could read it.
The book's scientific assumptions were challenged, but the general conclusion was then and is now thought to be mostly correct: Nuclear war has the capacity of ending human life on earth.
And how did it all happen? There is only a general explanation--things got out of hand.
Bibi Netanyahu, Iran, Ukraine are not mentioned nor predicted.
But you can be sure Joe Biden, addled as he might have been, remembered "On the Beach," as he replied to a question about whether the United States would go to war with Russia over Ukraine, "I don't want to start World War Three," Biden said.
Throughout "Untold History," American politicians continuously invoke the horrific menace of what we are facing--communists, Central American revolutionaries, Africans from tumultuous failed states, and it all sounds so today--we need strong men (in masks) to protect us from rape and murder coming from people who are not White or Christian or even English speaking. The escalation from the mundane to the five alarm fire is simply first gear for the MAGA mob.
But where is our "On The Beach" today?
Where is the book or movie or Netflix series about a Kingfish who denigrates experts, scientists, generals, becomes President, unleashes previously controlled viral diseases by abandoning vaccines, betrays America's allies, starts a war in the Middle East, then moves on to a war with China, as masked storm troopers suppress all dissent, murder and imprison all opposition, as he churns out gold coins with his image imprinted on them, renames airports, bridges, buildings, theaters, sports arenas after himself and he fiddles (or plays golf) while his apathetic nation is distracted by the circus, and he ultimately provokes Armageddon?
Is the story simply implausible? Just too far out?
In today's media world even a book as riveting as Shute's would have to fight through an ocean of titles competing for attention. In 1960, there were only three TV channels and Hollywood produced a manageable stream of movies shown in local theaters. You could get everyone's attention, if you had the money.
Today, getting enough clicks is tougher, and getting people to actually sit still and watch a movie is even more unattainable. And, to get the attention "On the Beach" got, to achieve that sort of reach through our population, you'd need Bezos, Zuckerberg, all the 0.001% guys to get on board.
Don't think we could rely on Elon Musk for that.
Or, for that matter, any of them.
But there is a chance: A lot of people watch "The Pitt," and millions will see "One Battle After Another."
The question is whether or not it is still possible to get enough people on the same page to coalesce opinion.
But, it won't be easy: even after masked federal agents shot a White mother and a White nurse in Minneapolis, Americans turned the page and moved on to "March madness."
