21st Century Fears

Oh, how the world has changed, not just in the technological, medical, and scientific advances, but also in the fear most of us feel. I just read an article about a bullet-proof panel that can be inserted in a child’s backpack, and shatter-proof glass for school doors and windows. A bullet could still come through but the glass itself would remain for about four minutes before it would fall apart, long enough for police and SWAT to arrive. These are not the schools I grew up attending, nor the schools I taught in for over thirty years. These are the new, frightening schools in which students are trained to take cover, where teachers are armed, and schools are in lock-down during the school day.

And now we have a renewed threat of nuclear war, with more and more nations now having the bomb or nearly having it—North Korea, Iran, China, Russia, the U.S. We also have a renewed fear that someone could make a mistake, especially when you consider our unpredictable president with his finger near the button that could start it all.  It reminded me of a made-for-television movie from 2000, Failsafe, based on the 1962 novel by Burdick and Wheeler.  This filmed version was done live in black and white, just like the old Playhouse 90, and it was excellent.  Somehow, American planes were mistakenly dispatched to bomb Moscow. Our president, to prove his sincerity about our planes being just a mistake, vowed to the Russian leader that if they made it through to Moscow and destroyed it, he would order our planes to do the same thing to New York City.  What an awful decision, but the only one that would prevent an all-out war of devastation.  George Clooney went out on a limb as producer, but this film was well worth it.  Eighteen years ago, I’d nearly forgotten just how frightened we all used to be about nuclear annihilation.  I remember a dream I had back then in which the sky was filled with planes coming to drop nuclear bombs on us, thinking, “Oh my god, this is it, this is the end of me and my family and everyone else in the world.”  It was the cold horror of knowing that everything, everything, everything would be gone.  How could I forget that dream?  Well, George Clooney and his Failsafe reminded me.  None of us should ever forget how close we came to doing just that, ending the whole damn thing. And now, here we are again, looking for some way to make world leaders realize how stupid and awful the unleashing of nuclear weapons would be. Are you listening, Kim Jong-un, Hassan Rouhani, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and especially you Donald Trump?