“How did it come to this? That’s the question that would be on everyone’s mind had a nuclear war occurred and hundreds or thousands of nuclear weapons been used. Had a full-scale nuclear war broken out, especially after about the late 1960s,* we would still be trying to recover today.
Hundreds of the world’s most important cities would have been hit and transformed instantly into vast, corpse-strewn ruins. The radiation would still be in everything.
A descendant of ours reading a history of our day and age in the future would be justified in thinking us to be the functional equivalent of the stereotypical reckless and childish “barbarians” that the Romans wrote of, although in possession of absurdly strong weapons they couldn’t hope to control.
It would be unfair, though, if they thought us evil. The road to hell, it is said, is paved with good intentions, and if a nuclear holocaust had happened, or ever eventually occurs, evil was never why people poured their lives and reputations into such endeavors.
So many who helped pave the way to this reality, rather than being murderous Adolf Eichmann–type monsters, were instead hoping their efforts would lead to better outcomes.*” – Excerpt From The End Is Always Near – by Dan Carlin.
The Point
Never in the history of the world, was there a more absurd example of an illogical summation of a logical premise.
We are to believe that any disastrous endeavour, if began under good moral auspices, no matter its outcome, will have not been in vain.
More to the point, that would put Hitler in the wrong for killing 25 million human beings only because he was a sadistic evil man. How morally bankrupt such a concept would be!!!
But if America had started a nuclear war during the Cold War, or perhaps today, it would not be a crime against humanity even if its victims numbered in the millions, because why, because America, ladies and gentlemen.
I believe that both West and East needed a scapegoat for their own racism, anti-Semitism and monumental failure to protect human life before and during WW2.
And while Hitler was certainly the perfect candidate for the Henchman of the 20th century, just like Napoleon had been for the 19th, it is both too facile and certainly disingenuous to forget and forgive the callousness with which both capitalists and communists ignored the plight of European Jews.
There can be no question in anyone’s mind about how easily the Allies shifted the blame from everybody’s shoulders to Germany’s alone. In doing so, they proved how morally defective they were and continue to be in keeping contemporary Germany in a state of veiled moral censorship and receivership.
The Counterpoint
While Nazism is an ideology that ought to be shunned, disregarded and blamed for the demise of millions of human beings, just as Communism never was although it should have been, Germany and Russia are two countries that nonetheless have a lot to teach humanity.
There is more culture and civilization in these two countries than there can be had in most other much bigger and more populated countries.
Europe remains to this day the Cradle of Civilization. And Italy is ground zero for the diffusion of the Arts. And Ancient Rome is Caput Mundi.
And no, I do not believe other parts of the world could ever lay claim to progress as Europe can. To say that the Maya, the Aztec, the Inca, or any other remote peoples, are Europe’s equals, is to go against historical fact and common sense.
Where were the majority of these peoples when they got discovered by the curious enterprising Europeans?! Most of them were in the Stone Age. Some were quite advanced. A few had even attempted, like the Chinese, to mount their own Westward expeditions, only to turn back for extraneous reasons.
Where would Europe be now if Columbus had turned back in the middle of the Atlantic?
Where would the World be if he had done so?
And finally where is the World today because he went on to discover the Americas?
Europe bred the men and women who put a man on the Moon.
A few years back, when the folly of youth made me think social media was a force for good, I got into an argument with some social justice warriors who took offence with me saying that the Stone Age Native Americans discovered by Europeans could not have put a man on the Moon by the year of our Lord 1969.
Yes, you heard right. Some people think that Native Americans have the same merit for advancing human knowledge and the limits of our known universe as Europe does with its scientific knowledge.
And this is the reason why we are heading towards the precipice. Because we no longer judge things from a moral perspective. Because we put the equal sign between good actions undertaken by bad people and vice versa.
We no longer take a God’s view on what merits implementing and what must be discarded from public policy. We don’t appreciate the critical aspect of our decisions over the long term.
We live as if LIFE itself was limited to our minute lifespans. We don’t innovate anymore. We just upgrade old stuff. We stopped looking into the future. We look more and more towards the past as if our biggest achievements happened over our shoulders.
Is this how we want to be remembered?
Or do we want to change tracks and start thinking forward again, confident and secure in our knowledge that the best part for us and our children is yet to come?!
“A thousand years scarce serve to form a State,
An hour may lay it in the dust: and when
Can man its shattered splendour renovate,
Recall its virtues back, and vanquish Time and Fate?”
Childe Harold, Canto xi, stanza lxxxiv.
Götterdämmerung 