I Don't Freakin'
Believe It
by Smoot
Decmember 24, 1999
"Join the Army. Meet interesting people. Kill them."
 Headlines for July 16, 1999
Giving War Head
The Senate, in an effort to pump a little juice into the
ol' Cold War, rejected a treaty banning all
underground nuclear testing in a 51-48 vote that
crushed President Clinton's clearly selfish foreign
policy goal of not wanting to start a nuclear
holocaust.
The vote on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty,
which needed two-thirds majority to pass, was
largely along party lines, lending credibility to rumors
the Republican Party will soon be replacing their
trademark Elephant with radiation sickness and
leukemia.
The failure of the treaty to clear Washington raised
serious questions about its survival, and in turn the
future of human kind, but on a positive note, maybe
some jobs were created!
Trent Lott explained, "The treaty does not meet even
the minimal standards of previous arms control
treaties," adding, "and as of present there are still no
nuclear blasts strong enough to move my hair ...THE
TESTING MUST CONTINUE!!!"
Other critics of the treaty, known heretofore as
"idiots," claim the ban would freeze the U.S.
dangerously in place while states like North Korea,
Iran, China and Russia conducted secret tests that
eroded America's nuclear deterrent, while other
states like Mississippi, Georgia and the Carolinas
keep conducting breeding test that produce ignorant
senators.
As that highly satirical news broadcast showed, the treaty that would ban all nuclear
testing was shot down by our own United States Congress. Now, before you dismiss this news
with little more than a shrug of your shoulders, let's take a look at this from a frank
perspective.
First off, one of the ever-present dangers in this world is the threat, or at least the
possibility, of nuclear war. Even thought the Cold War is long past over, with India,
Pakistan, China, Russia, and about four or five more all holding nuclear reserves of
varying sizes.
So, yeah, that's reassuring. I mean, I love waking up in the morning and thinking how
easy it would be for some little plane to fly over Virginia, all nice and close to the
ocean, and drop a little ol' nuke on me while I'm eating breakfast. That really puts a
spring in my step and a crackle in my Rice Krispies.
So what does Clinton decide to do? The right thing. He proposes that we take the
nukes away. Working slowly, of course, starting with the underground testing. That helps
let everyone know who has what, so we can't be caught napping as Morocco unloads their
massive arsenal on us, or some other tiny insignificant country. (Great, now some
Morocconian is gonna come to my house with a Glock and a big stick.)
I don't like Clinton that much, but I had to admit that he was doing the right thing.
Let's face it, kids. There's enough flamin' nukes in this world to blow it into asteroid
parts. If you detonated all the assorted nuclear devices at once (which, even though it
sounds improbable, is basically what happens in a full-scale nuclear war), you wouldn't
have a planet left to stand on. (a la Dana Carvey, a la Paul McCartney) And you could
bring a chair so you could have a sit, but if you think that chair's going to stay, well,
you'd be bloody wrong. So where would you be? You'd be standing in the sky, without a
chair or a place to stand. It's bloody madness, I tell you.
I watched SNL. Lighten up.
But really. With the current world leadership, it seems to be just a matter of time
before we're forcibly flung about ten thousand years backwards as civilization goes up in
a mushroom cloud.
Another thing. Did you see that list of countries up there wth nukes? Pakistan? Where
the hell did Pakistan get nuclear weapons? We know Cuba has them. Russia, India,
China... it won't be long before nuclear weaponry is being sold to all those Third World
countries. You know, the ones with the 10-year-olds toting M-16s.
What is up with stuff anyway? Those kids have been fighting for peace for, oh, how long
now? Since at least 1990, if I recall correctly. Something is seriously wrong with that
picture.
Who says you can't have peace without war? Where's that written? Think about it. Every
time someone wants to live in peace, free from outside harm, or even inside harm, lots of
people have to die. Lots of your people, as well as theirs, have to die. Why is
that?
This is what lowers faith in human nature. When we cannot live in simple harmony, and
more often than not, it's the fault of the bureaucrats. You hear? You hear me?! *shaking
fist*
That's the big problem here. We're all fighting over some little parcel of land for no
real reason and trying to kill enough people so we can live in peace, when we should be
trying to colonize Mars and the moon.
'Cause when you bastards blow up the world, I need somewhere to live. So go build
better and faster spacesjips, and probes that don't self-destruct, and get me a moon
condo. I'll be damned if I let you politicians, in your quest for election, kill my kids.
And now, a closing thought.
No government admits any more that it keeps an army to satisfy occasionally the
desire for conquest. Rather the army is supposed to serve for defense, and one invokes the
morality that approves of self-defense. But this implies one's own morality and the
neighbor's immorality; for the neighbor must be thought of as eager to attack and conquer
if our state must think of means of self-defense. More over, the reasons we give for
requiring an army imply that our neighbor, who denies the desire for conquest just as much
as does our own state, and who, for his part, also keeps an army only for reasons of
self-defense, is a hypocrite and a cunning criminal who would like nothing better than to
overpower a harmless and awkward victim without any fight. Thus all states are now
ranged against each other: they presuppose their neighbor's bad disposition and their own
good disposition.
This presupposition, however, is INHUMANE, as bad as war and worse. At bottom,
indeed, it is itself the challenge and the cause of wars, because, as I have said, it
attributes immorality to the neighbor and thus provokes a hostile disposition and
act. We must abjure the doctrine of the army as a means of self-defense just as
completely as the desire for conquests.
And perhaps the great day will come when a people, distinguished by wars and
victories and by the highest development of a military order and intelligence, and
accustomed to make the heaviest sacrifices for these things, will exclaim of its own free
will, "We break the sword," and will smash its entire military establishment
down to its lowest foundations. RENDERING ONESELF UNARMED WHEN ONE HAD BEEN THE BEST
ARMED, out of a height of feeling - this is the means to real peace, which must always
rest on a peace of mind; whereas the so-called armed peace, as it now exists in all
countries, is the absence of peace of mind. One trusts neither oneself nor one's
neighbor and, half from hatred, half from fear, does not lay down arms. Rather
perish than hate and fear, and twice rather perish than make oneself hated and feared -
this must someday become the highest maxim for every single commonwealth too.
Our liberal representatives, as is well known, lack the time for reflecting on the
nature of man: else they would know that they work in vain when they work when they work
for a "gradual decrease of the military burden." Rather, only when this
kind of need has become greatest will the kind of god be nearest who alone can help
here. The tree of war-glory can only be destroyed all at once, by a stroke of
lightning: but lightning, as indeed you know, comes from a cloud - and from up high.
The preceding was taken from Billy Ferguson
with permission, who took inspiration and some wording from Frederick Nietszche.
-Matt W Bowyer
Edition 1: Fanficcers' Depression and ways to get over it.
Edition 2: "May You Live in Interesting Times"
Edition 3: OTL, Chicken Debacle, and much ranting and raving.
Edition 4: Image is Everything
Edition 5: Web page wars, and safety in the school.
Edition 6: Reality or the illusion therein.
Edition 7: Hypocrisy. |