#473 Nagasaki, Pro-life Dems, Burnout August 9, 2019
Last Deliberate Use of Nukes Against Humans: Nagasaki Today, August 9, is the 74th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki. In our blog post this week, put up on August 6, the anniversary of the first deliberate bombing of human beings in Hiroshima, John Whitehead compiled quotations in “Everybody Else in the World Was Dead”: Hiroshima’s Legacy. He includes stories from hibakusha – atom bomb survivors – plus quotations linking nuclear weapons and abortion; we include another in the Quotation of the Week below. May this date ever remain the last time nuclear weapons are deliberately targeted against human beings.
Nuclear Debate During the Democratic debates so far, nuclear weapons came up twice. Elizabeth Warren asserted she’d follow a No First Use policy. She was the only one asked this crucial question – and she was asked to defend her position! The questioner asserted that with this policy the U.S. would “tie its own hands.” People who propose “first use” as remotely acceptable should be embarrassed. Secondly, Tulsi Gabbard pointed out: “Now, as we stand here tonight, there are thousands of nuclear missiles pointed at us. And if we were to get an attack right here tonight, we would have 30 minutes. . . . And you would receive an alert like the one we received in Hawaii last year that would say, “Incoming missile. Seek immediate shelter . . . And you would see as we did . . . there is no shelter. This is the warmonger’s hoax.”
More News on the Democrats’ Debate Being a non-partisan organization, we offer comments on any political news from any party or independent candidate giving insight on our issues. We start with the good news: whenever the topic of the death penalty came up, which was only a few times, everyone was against it. Euthanasia / assisted suicide didn’t come up at all, so there’s no push for it in this venue. But for the bad news, the continually horrifying news: the few times abortion came up – always in euphemisms – it was always asserted as if it were a good thing. Action news: our member group Democrats for Life was nearby finishing their annual conference, and they used the opportunity to hold a rally. They said “we sent a message that we are looking for a candidate who wants our vote! We were joined by our friends at the Pro-Life Dem Draft PAC, who are raising money to draft a pro-life Democrat to run in 2020.”
More on Burnout Jim Forest, long-time activist and author of At Play in the Lion’s Den, a bio of Daniel Berrigan, added this note to last week’s blog post: “I once wrote Thomas Merton when I was on the edge of burnout and got an extremely helpful response.”
Quotation of the Week Julianne Wiley Consistently Opposing Killing, Chapter 12, Activists Reminisce: An Oral History of Prolifers for Survival
Julianne, aka Juli Loesch, was founder of Prolifers for Survival, the precursor group to the Consistent Life Network. To me nuclear weapons and abortion were perfect bookends, symmetrical images of each other. They both involved a frank commitment to targeting innocent targets, and they both depended on the calculated willingness to destroy them deliberately. . . . The two issues struck me as being so absolute they set up a kind of a north and south pole, a whole magnetic force that drew in a lot of other issues because of the clarity of those two.
Responses/News Tips/Questions to share are all welcome.
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