Welcome to Part 2 in our series of short antiwar films by Jonny Lewis.
Jonny tells us this about the film, “Truth in recruiting”:
“On one of my filmmaking trips to Los Angeles, my Lyft driver to the airport was a young man on furlough from the Army. He was telling me how the Army recruiter lied to him, and how they told him more lies once he was in the Army. Strangely, he wasn’t bitter or angry. In fact, he was a rather spiritual young man, though not professing to be so. This got me to picturing what would happen if an innocent young man went to the recruiting office because he needed a job in order to help his family, and the recruiter was somehow forced to tell him some of the horrible truths about war. What if the “Be All You Can Be” poster with the cool helicopter also had a disclaimer at the bottom: ‘You might die. You might get your arms or legs blown off.’”
The Finger on the Button is the third video in our series of short antiwar videos from Jonny Lewis. This one is less than four minutes long but packs a wallop. In light of the fact that the current POTUS ordered the Pentagon to test a new missile last Sunday (which would have violated a Cold War-era treaty if the Trump administration had not ditched it earlier this month), perhaps it’s time to treat this comic film and other warnings regarding the reviving nuclear threat seriously. Very seriously.
We’ll be showing more of Jonny Lewis’s Imaginative Beseeching Messages (the only honorable form of IBMs) on this website. Meanwhile, please visit Jonny’s website and tell him Kathie MM from Engaging Peace sent you.
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has set the doomsday clock at two minutes to midnight—the hour of the death of life. (See more here ).
You, personally, have a number of options right now:1)
Feel too terrified to do anything about the growing threat from nuclear arms
development; 2) pretend the threat is not real and go about your business as if
the threat of nuclear Armageddon is “fake news”; or 3) pay attention, assume
responsibility for your own future and the future of life on the planet, and
help stop the clock.
United for Peace and Justicetells us some really bad news: “As we approach the 74th anniversaries of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, our world is facing numerous nuclear flashpoints within global conflicts and crises that could catastrophically escalate at any moment.
“The formal U.S. withdrawal on August 2 from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty is another sign of deepening crisis among the nuclear-armed states. Following the 2002 U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, this latest move imperils the entire structure of arms control and disarmament, including prospects for extension of the New START Treaty that expires in 2021. The dangers of nuclear war are real and growing.
“From the Korean Peninsula, to the South China Sea, to the Middle East and South Asia, all the nuclear-armed states are engaged in unpredictable conflicts that could catastrophically escalate out of control. Tensions between the U.S. and Russia have risen to levels not seen since the Cold War, with the two nuclear giants confronting each other in Ukraine, Eastern Europe, and Syria and an accelerated tempo of military exercises and war games, both conventional and nuclear, on both sides. Risky close encounters between Russian and U.S./NATO forces have increased dramatically in the Baltic region and Syria.
“Under Trump, when inflation and the novel concepts in his Nuclear Posture Review are included, the U.S. is on a path to spend nearly $2,000,000,000,000 (trillion) over thirty years to upgrade its nuclear weapons complex, warheads and delivery systems. Russia, China, France, U.K., India, Israel and Pakistan have embarked on nuclear modernization programs of their own. While halting talks with North Korea have commenced, the Trump Administration scuttled the Iran nuclear deal and is escalating pressure on the Iranian regime.
“Today, nearly 14,000 nuclear weapons, most an order of magnitude more powerful than the U.S. atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki— 92% held by the United States and Russia – continue to pose an intolerable threat to humanity.”
The good news is that meetings, and protests, and demonstrations are being organized all over the country (and internationally) this month.
Here’s a link from Physicians for Social Responsibility listing many public events in August, Nuclear Free Month.
In late May, Vice
President Mike Pence was the commencement speaker at West Point. In part, he
told the graduating cadets this: “It is a virtual certainty that you will
fight on a battlefield for America at some point in your life. You will
lead soldiers in combat. It will happen…And when that day comes, I know
you will move to the sound of the guns and do your duty, and you will fight,
and you will win. The American people expect nothing less.”
What
Pence didn’t mention
that day is why he
could be so sure that this will come to pass. Or who the primary beneficiaries will be, if or when it does.
Because the winners won’t be the American people, who see their taxes go to
missiles instead of healthcare and education. Nor will they be the soldiers
themselves—some of whom will return in flag-draped caskets while many more
sustain life-altering physical and psychological injuries. The winners also
won’t be the citizens of other countries who experience death and displacement
on a horrific scale from our awesome military might. And our planet’s
now-fragile climate won’t come out on top either, since the Pentagon is the
single largest oil consumer in the world.
No, the
spoils will go to our massive and multifaceted war machine. The war machine is
comprised of companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, and
Raytheon, among others, that make billions of
dollars each year from war, war preparations, and arms sales. In fact, the U.S.
government pays Lockheed alone more
each year than it provides in funding to the Environmental Protection Agency,
the Labor Department, and the Interior Department combined. The war machine also includes the CEOs of these defense
contractors, who personally take in tens of millions of dollars annually, and
the many politicians in Washington who help secure their jobs by collectively
accepting millions of dollars in contributions from the defense industry—roughly
evenly split between both major
parties. And let’s not forget the retired politicians and retired military
officers, who travel the pot-of-gold pipeline to become highly paid board
members and spokespersons for these same companies.
Vice-President Pence also
didn’t mention to the cadets that the U.S. military budget today exceeds that
of the next seven largest countries combined—an enthusiastic display of
Congressional bipartisanship at its very worst. Nor did he note that we’re the
largest international seller of major weapons in the world, with ongoing
efforts to promote even bigger markets for U.S. arms companies in countries run
by ruthless, repressive autocrats. That’s how it came to pass last August, for
example, that Saudi Arabia used an expensive Lockheed laser-guided bomb to blow
up a bus in Yemen, killing 40 young boys who were on a school trip.
Given these realities, I’d like to offer my perspective—as a psychologist—on a question that has never really been more timely: How is it that the war profiteers, card-carrying members of the so-called 1%, continue to thrive despite all the harm and misery they cause for so many? We know that the 1%—the self-interested very rich and powerful—set the priorities of many of our elected officials. We also know that they exert considerable influence over the mainstream media regarding which narratives are promoted and which are obscured. But in my own work, what’s most important—and what too often goes unrecognized—are the propaganda strategies they use to prevent us from realizing what’s gone wrong, who’s to blame, and how we can make things better. And nowhere is this more apparent or more consequential than when it comes to the one-percenters who run our war machine. In my next three posts, I describe these strategies.
